The new way to consume video: Meerkat vs Periscope

• curtishowe


• 2 Apr 2015

If you are a regular user of Twitter you may have heard the combustion around an app called Meerkat.

Meerkat is an app that allows you to stream live video onto Twitter for people to watch. You can even schedule your video and people can join it when it goes live. This is a marked difference from the Vine app Twitter released a few years ago where you can record up to 15 seconds of video then share it out to your followers to watch. Meerkat is live video. Real time activity. People that follow your stream can even send you comments that you and the other viewers can see and discuss.

One way businesses have used this is to open a live stream of how their business runs behind the scenes. For instance a restaurant will set up a phone on their kitchen as you can watch them make your food. If you offer classes you can live stream your class or event to Twitter now too. This could be a great way to help more people understand your business and have a glimpse of what you do. Educational sales processes can benefit from this tool.

Not long after Meerkat was dominating the News cycles a new app came up that competes with them. It’s name is Periscope. Periscope basically does the same thing yet tends to encourage more engagement from your followers and be more about constant interaction with the people on the video rather than just a live stream of what you are doing.

In Periscope you can watch people’s videos, comment to them and others watching as well as hit a button to offer hearts or “love” to the person making the video. These videos are actually saved for up to 24 hours so you can go back and watch them later too. There is a lot more interaction between the watchers of the video and the producer of the video here. Periscope is a great way to offer Q & A sessions and offer the opportunity to allow people to learn more about your business.

Both apps are really moving video in a new direction of being real time rather than something made then viewed later. For a business, the opportunity to interact with customers and help them buy from you is truly amazing with these types of apps.

How would you use these in your business? Leave a comment below and tell us!