Twitter Pushes For Celebs To Abandon Meerkat For Periscope
Now that Twitter has acquired the live-streaming platform, Periscope, which "lets you see the world in real-time through someone else's eyes", Twitter doing what it can to keep its rival, Meerkat, from gaining traction. Twitter is rumored to be using strategic tactics to keep its rival, Meerkat, off the playing field, especially because Meerkat exclusively uses Twitter to push its live streams. Twitter could fear that if Meerkat gains a strong user following, then there won't be enough of a user base to catapult Periscope to success.
It looks as though Twitter is doing whatever is in its power to nip Meerkat in the bud. When it comes to new social media platforms, in order to be successful, platforms needs fast, furious, and widespread adoption in their early stages to succeed. Until they reaches a critical mass, they're still in the danger zone of lacking enough of an audience to maintain attraction and build content. From Twitter's perspective, there isn't enough room for both Periscope and Meerkat's new live streaming apps, and Twitter is doing everything it can to ensure that Periscope comes out on top of this showdown.
Allegedly, Twitter has been reaching out to celebrities using Meerkat and trying to sway them to Periscope for their live streaming needs. The long arm of Twitter extends to media companies, too. Twitter purportedly hinted that if use Periscope exclusively, then their access to Amplify might be in jeopardy. This is a weighty risk, as Amplify allows advertisers to tweet video clips that get promoted across twitter.
Meerkat hasn't gotten off to a great start so far. There have been some definite snags along the way. Last week, Madonna was supposed to launch an exclusive new video on Meerkat, but anyone who tried to view the stream was met by a 500 error page, making the lauded video debut an utter failure. Twitter has already cut Meerkat off from using its social graph feature to build a network of users. Meerkat hasn't sunk yet, but Twitter is continuing to make it difficult for Meerkat to stay afloat.
Source: Tech Crunch