Why I moved from Meerkat to Periscope

During SXSW this year Meerkat was all the rage, it was on fire and you couldn’t go to an event without seeing dozens of phones broadcasting live through the app. As Meerkat use grew like crazy there was a momentary gasp from users (and the founders) as Twitter had seemed to disable the auto-tweet feature. Luckily this was a momentary glitch and the Twitter team fixed things and boom, Meerkat was back in action:

Meerkat thanks Twitter

As someone that loves new social media services I jumped on Meerkat and tried to broadcast as much as I possibly could during SXSW this year. It was a lot of fun and I can’t lie, there is a bit of a thrill when a new person would join the stream. For me, and I’m pretty sure this is true for just about everyone, the more people watching your broadcast, the more you want to do it.

Meerkat Live Broadcast

I would say that on average I would have between four and eight people that would watch my Meerkat broadcasts but there was more than one occasion where I sat there filming a live event for nobody. It’s an awkward feeling. You’re hoping someone will come on and start watching, but after a minute or two it just feels too weird and you have to shut it down, your broadcast failed.

While Meerkat may have been all the rage during SXSW, on March 26th Twitter launched the Periscope iOS app just two weeks after acquiring a live video-streaming company called Periscope. I was assuming that my experience with Periscope would be incredibly similar to Meerkat, I was wrong, it was better, a lot better, so I made the switch and I haven’t opened the Meerkat app since getting Periscope, and here’s why.

Periscope App Viewers

My very first Periscope broadcast had over 40 viewers, now my average broadcast has between 50 – 100. The screenshot above was taken while we were walking home from work on Monday, 142 viewers, 100% retention. The most amount of viewers I ever had on a Meerkat was 9.

It has been incredibly to connect with people all over the world through Periscope, my last broadcast had people from all over Europe, the US and Canada. It’s not rare to have people from all over the world on a simple broadcast and that is what makes it so satisfying to be a broadcaster on Periscope, it’s all about the viewers, and Periscope seems to have 10x the number of viewers per broadcast than Meerkat (based on my experience).

Now I’d love to hear from you. Have you tried Meerkat and Periscope? Which did you like more? Comment and let your voice be heard!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton