Why PR pros and marketers should get familiar with Meerkat
The app enables users to stream live video from their phones, and comments on those videos are posted as tweets. It could go the way of the dodo, but there’s a lot of potential.
I’m officially obsessed with Meerkat. If you’re not sold yet, it’s time to get on board.
Meerkat, for the uninitiated, is the latest in a long and winding line of social media tools that have captured imaginations and delighted our fickle, fake-ish online lives. It’s pretty darn addictive to boot.
It only works with Twitter and is currently only available for iOS devices. It enables users to stream live video from their phones, wherever they are, whatever they’re doing. Followers can reply on Meerkat to the action onscreen, and those replies show up as tweets.
I watched several Meerkatters stream their experience from the recent Apple Watch announcement in San Francisco. On Wednesday afternoon, I watched Blink 182 frontman and early Meerkat adopter Mark Hoppus pour himself a San Pellegrino and chat with fans as he readied for rehearsal.
Clearly, it’s not all super thrilling. But it is live, real-time and full of potential.
You can imagine how breaking news could potentially benefit here (think Arab Spring, Ferguson, etc.). One issue there: Meerkat videos are currently not archived, so when it’s over, the video is gone, sort of like Snapchat messages.
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