How did the meerkat that was blocked by Twitter fire?

How does the meerkat of the people and the heat rise?
In the mobile internet era, a smartphone application can often be incredibly fast, but every story is different.

These days at the SXSW conference in Texas Austin, a meerkat (mongoose) mobile application fire, but its fire is not accidental, claiming that no promotional Meerkat founder chose to let its products during the conference, there must be far-reaching strategic considerations, while, A few days ago was the news of the Twitter ban, how much to this is just born less than one months of application to bring some sad color, a weak being suppressed bullying image quickly in the crowd to win sympathy and goodwill, but to help up the Meerkat users in a short period of time the explosion of growth.

Meerkat's magical story has just begun, but the story can continue for how long, is an unavoidable problem, after all, there are too many applications in front of us "a flash in the pan." As for Meerkat, how to control the spread of improper content and sensitive content in the future, how to deal with the huge limitation of online streaming video traffic and how to keep users ' interest are not small challenges.

But Meerkat's emergence is a reminder that mobile internet socializing may be or is about to enter a third stage: The live video-sharing phase, perhaps as a milestone in this phase, along with live-Twich applications like the one.

The social application of Rapid leap red: the geographical and

SXSW Congress is the annual March in the United States Texas Austin held a collection of science and technology, music, film equals a comprehensive event. The conference was the first to have music, but since 1997, when it was incorporated into technological innovation, the event has become a major concern for many in the scientific and technical community and has always been the soil for many startups, and Twitter and Foursquare are examples.

This year, the most popular use of the title of a well-deserved fall in the name of "Meerkat" application. The app is very easy to explain to others: for online video streaming, based on the Twitter platform, using Meerkat to broadcast to your buddy video What's happening around you.

But with other start-up companies to do the booth, engage in activities, prizes, competitions and other High-profile publicity is different, Meerkat is very low-key appearance, and one appearance is a victim's posture.

A week before the start of the conference, Meerkat was brutally blocked by Twitter, and there were reports that Twitter had acquired another Periscope-like feature and Meerkat's very similar venture, which was tantamount to trying to nip Meerkat in the bud.

With the sad color of the meerkat, from the beginning to win the people's sympathy and goodwill, and due to participate in the SXSW Conference interactive Innovation in the participants, many of them are entrepreneurs, so it is easy to resonate among them.

Twitter "blocked" meerkat, but to some extent to help them get more support.

In addition, the Meerkat founder chooses to bring the product to the SXSW convention such occasion appearance, is not a coincidence, but has the very deep strategic consideration.

The SXSW conference has more than 30,000 participants a year. The popularity of nature needless to say, the most important thing is that most of these people are standing in the forefront of the technological innovation trend of the "tide people", they are "new exotic" science and technology innovation products naturally have a strong interest, at the same time, these people during the meeting the social needs are very strong , hoping to expand the circle of resources through this gathering. As a result, Meerkat satisfied the group of people willing to "taste" and have strong social needs, they are in countless small concerts, film screenings, star meeting and other activities on the site, willing to use the "latest tide" of the application, tell others what is happening in front of them.

"People are naturally willing to take the initiative to promote it, and we are not here to get people to focus on us, they are very active groups," Rubin Ben Rubin, founder of the yellow T-shirt with meerkat logo, said in a TechCruch interview. This group is naturally pushing us forward. ”

Rubin has repeatedly put forward the concept of "community" (Community), which makes Meerkat look more like a small, more "cool" social product, which is also very tempting for the people seeking unconventional.

During the SXSW conference, he was interviewed by several scientific and technical media and did not attend any lectures or group discussion activities. It's hard to find posters with meerkat logos on the streets of Austin.

Less than one months since February 27, Meerkat already has about a hundred thousand of users, about half of which were joined during the SXSW conference.

Will it be short-lived

Meerkat the fire, but how long will this social application be able to keep up with the crowd of SXSW? After all, we've seen too many applications in the pan.

In fact, Meerkat itself is an "unintentional" product, he was the chief technology officer of the Israeli Development company life on air Itai Danino originally developed for the company's video streaming media product air, not directly to the general public, But under the lead of the project's co-founder Rubin, Meerkat has become a social potential product.

According to Rubin's personal LinkedIn page, he worked on operations management at the company's Israel firm, and co-founded Air Company in San Francisco in early 2013, dedicated to developing video streaming applications. He graduated from the Israel Institute of Technology and received a bachelor's degree in architecture.

After Meerkat received a lot of attention, the company's 10 team members began to devote all their energies to creating this "by-product". The company's previous two apps air and Yevvo, which are also used for live video, are now off the shelves.

But Twitter's recent ban could be a fatal blow, because Twitter,meerkat can easily share live video feeds with its own social circle, but without a Twitter platform, meerkat How to keep users socially interactive?

In an interview with Yahoo, Rubin said Meerkat needs to address how users can find more other users, but he stressed that Twitter's actions have accelerated their decision to make their own social platforms.

Currently, users can search for other users of the app in the Meerkat app, while users can still share their personal meerkat account on Twitter and focus on Twitter friends.

In addition, whether the social form of meerkat itself can be widely accepted, whether from the perspective of social culture or the reality of user use, is a topic worthy of further discussion.

Because of the diversity of user groups, share of live content will be strange, it is not difficult to think, Meerkat will encounter the future like Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms also encountered sensitive content, improper content and other issues, in addition, and pictures, text and even short video is different, Live video will consume a lot of traffic, in the absence of WiFi environment, for users is a real limit to ignore.

In addition, in the mobile internet age, the user's attention is easily transferred, in a short period of time accumulated a large number of users, many are holding the "taste" mentality, the future of these people are still active users, whether it will continue to open the application to share things around or watch others around the things are hard to say.

But in any case, Meerkat's rapid popularity may represent the arrival of a new mobile internet phase, the first of which is a text-sharing representation of Twitter, followed by a Instagram and Snapchat image-sharing phase, Meerkat may be expected to become a landmark company in the live video-sharing phase.