A meerkat wrapped in a yellow background is the latest revolution on the Internet. It took her two weeks to dazzle thousands of people and reach Twitter, which has begun to hinder her. Something that can turn them into intimate enemies.
Meerkat, an application that offers the possibility of making live videos with an iPhone, in streaming, through Twitter and that has arrived ready to revolutionize the world of social networks.
Until this platform appeared, when you wanted to share on social networks that you were at an event or report an event, you either wrote it or uploaded an image. Posting a video was much more expensive. You had to upload it to an application and then share it on your profile.
Meerkat is simple. You download the application, log in with your Twitter account, give a name to what you want to share and click on "Stream". So a tweet is posted on your wall with the broadcast.
When the broadcast ends, the video disappears from the network, although before you have the option to save it on your smartphone or tablet.
Less than a month ago this application was uploaded to the Apple Store and in a few hours it was a success. 120 users in just 000 days demonstrates the boom of Meerkat. Data provided by Ben Rubin, founder of this social network, in an interview with The Guardian.
Rubin himself was ecstatic on his blog: ""The last two weeks have been incredible. We are starting to see how people broadcast their videos live in different corners of the world."
The success has been such that Twitter, the very network in which it is spread, already sees it as a threat from which it has to defend itself. Initially, when you created an account on Meerkat, it accessed your follower list and the people you follow on Twitter. So every time someone of your followers started a stream, Meerkat sent you a notification.
Since last Saturday, Twitter has shielded that information. There is only one way to know if someone is broadcasting and that is to see the tweet that announces it.
However, a Twitter spokesperson assures that the objective is not to hinder Meerkat but to establish a measure consistent with the company's internal policy. Additionally, he noted: "Meerkat users will still be able to distribute videos on Twitter."
Although they denied any type of extortion, that same day they announced the purchase of Periscope, an application in the testing phase that is focused on doing the same as Meerkat.
