Live Mobile Video Streaming is BACK
Surely by now you’ve seen all the hype surrounding live mobile video streaming app Meerkat (iOS only). The timing of the buildup seemed to coincide with SXSW and now with similar apps Periscope (in private beta) and Stre.am (available for iOS & Android) it seems that the live mobile video streaming app category will become the breakout category at SXSW.
It’s interesting how a pattern has emerged for SXSW with app buildups ahead of the conference that are designed specifically to enhance the conference experience for attendees. We saw this in 2009 with Foursquare and Gowalla competing for the checkin space, in 2012 it was Highlight, Glancee and Sonar which offered a more passive experience for identifying friends close to you than the explicit checkin, and now in 2015 it’s live mobile video streaming. Some of these app categories have done well with mainstream users outside the hype bubble of the conference, while others have not.
The live mobile video streaming category isn’t new. Upon first learning of Meerkat it reminded me of a smiliar app called Qik (which was purchased by Skype to create a new app) which I used back in 2008. Apparently many others feel the same way. Then later I used uStream’s mobile app to broadcast live video from my phone at an event. But live mobile video streaming didn’t fare too well and I believe it was due to a few factors.
0 Mobile hardware wasn’t powerful enough
0 App software maturity wasn’t quite ready
0 Network bandwidth wasn’t fast enough (pre-LTE)
0 People weren’t as comfortable sharing personal media (pre-selfie)
I think all of these obstacles have pretty much been overcome, although battery life may still be a hardware issue, for these apps to finally be ready for prime time. It will be interesting if this app category survives its current hype to that of a new media sharing category to emerge into the mainstream.
