Culture

Meerkat vs Periscope: Will These New Livestreaming Apps Actually Change Anything?

But could they change the face of journalism, or threaten our privacy? Or will they just be used to view the content of other people's fridges?

by Oscar Schwartz  31 March 2015

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When I was a kid, I often thought about how cool it would be if cameras replaced my eyes so that people could watch everything from my perspective via their TV. Thanks to the sudden popularity of livestreaming video apps and my iPhone – which I carry with me everywhere and has basically become a type of prosthetic sense perception – this completely insane, childish and slightly disturbing daydream has now come true.

The two livestreaming apps that have made the news recently are Meerkat and Periscope. People started talking about Meerkat after this year’s South by Southwest Interactive, an annual technology festival held in Austin, Texas, where emergent technologies go to debut. Every year, one app captures the festival’s collective imagination and is anointed tech-prom Queen, so to speak. In 2007 it was Twitter, 2012 was Foursquare, and this year it was Meerkat.

Meerkat’s user base grew massively after SXSW. Strangely, there was a reverse-cycle adoption of the app, beginning with news sites, celebrities and politicians, and then moving down to “the masses”.

But just when everyone thought Meerkat was the next big thing, Twitter withdrew support and announced its very own linked-up livestreaming service, Periscope. The battle for the future of livestreaming was quick and brutal. Periscope smashed Meerkat, breaking into iPhone app top 30 chart in its first few days, while Meerkat collapsed into the 500s. So while Meerkat was the darling of tech journalists for the last few months, now its “Meerwho?”

Embracing The Beauty Of The Mundane

Even though Periscope has emerged as the new queen, it is important to remember that it doesn’t actually involve any ground-breaking technology. Livestreaming has been around for ages. Cam girls have been experimenting with livestreaming as a form of authentic self-expression since the 1990s, and precursors like Ustream and YouNow have had a devoted but relatively modest user-base for the past few years. And there are also plenty of other places online where you can stream yourself doing more niche activities, like gaming, or having sex. So what makes Periscope noteworthy?

The first thing is its useability. By being tightly integrated with Twitter, it takes no time to sign up and start using. I downloaded the app, linked it to my account, and started streaming myself looking through my fridge in a total of around three minutes. A link to my livestream was automatically tweeted to my followers, and I could watch as more and more people (honestly it was only like five of them) joined my broadcast. Once I stopped the broadcast I had the option of saving or deleting it. In this sense, it didn’t feel like I was making a video, but just broadcasting a few minutes of my life. The whole experience was immediate, simple and, for me at least, engaging.

That said, a lot of the hype around Periscope comes down to good timing. Thanks to apps like Snapchat, people are used to the idea of being ephemerally but visually involved in each other’s lives via their phones. Periscope is the video-streaming extension of this phenomenon, using Twitter to amplify its reach. In the past, livestreaming services haven’t put the same emphasis on broadcasting from mobile devices, and I think this really makes a huge difference. Like I said, because so many of us are always attached to our phones, Periscope kind of feels like having an extra pair of networked eyes.

Another reason for Periscope’s success is that it fully embraces the beauty of the mundane. While Meerkat sought validity via enticing celebrities and politicians to adopt early, Periscope has focused on the great swarming masses of Internet folk. Within the first few days of launching, Periscope already had its own meme – “Fridging” – in which users show each other the contents of their fridge. It’s been estimated that up to 85% of all Periscopes are fridge-based content.

The interface of the app encourages users to explore what normal people all over the world are doing. It also gives viewers the opportunity to interact with the broadcaster in real time with messages and love hearts. Just this morning I was watching a guy in America with a beard wander around his apartment, and occasionally pick up his guitar and hum folk songs. To be consistent with his taste, I asked him to sing Simon and Garfunkel, and he did: ‘Scarborough Fair’. The immediacy of the experience was astonishing. Everything on Periscope happens Live Now! – a mindless distraction from the past and the future via enlarging the scope and reach of the present tense.

Citizen Journalism vs Privacy Invasion

While the immediacy of the mundane is fully embraced in this new space, it’s also not hard to imagine Periscope’s greater social utility. For instance, imagine how effectively Periscope might’ve been used in Ferguson as a raw alternative to the media’s sensationalist coverage. Periscope’s ease of use will also allow a single journalist to cover a news item all on their own. Just turn up at a breaking news site, and start taking a selfie; no camera crew needed. If this type of reporting becomes more prevalent, it could transform the news to some extent — although it’s more likely that, like tweets, Periscopes will just be incorporated into the pre-existing model.

The other side of this coin is the further invasion of our privacy. It’s equally easy to imagine Periscope being used as a type of user-generated surveillance. Imagine this: A protest starts in the CBD. The police want to personally target a member of the group. They send out a tweet asking everyone in the CBD to start broadcasting. The police now effectively have thousands of pairs of eyes on the situation, and video footage, which they can retrospectively use as incriminating evidence.

Once you start thinking about Periscope and how it could be used for control and surveillance, it’s easy to come up with thousands of other equally paranoid situations. Black Mirror has done an episode on what this might look like, and it’s frightening.

As with all new communication technologies, Periscope simultaneously opens new possibilities for human expression, at the expense of our ability to spend time alone, really alone. The fact that Periscope does this with such searing clarity probably means that it has a vibrant future ahead of it. Interestingly, Periscope’s catchphrase is “explore the world through someone else’s eyes.” When I was a kid the thought of people watching the world through my eyes was excitingm and Periscope really does feel like the realisation of that daydream.

I just Periscoped myself dancing in my kitchen. It was quite exhilarating, really. Dancing like nobody was watching, or rather, dancing as if nobody was watching but knowing, at the back of my mind, that potentially thousands of strangers could watch from all around the world.

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Oscar Schwartz is a technology writer from Melbourne. He blogs from here, and tweets from @scarschwartz