Meerkat now lets you follow people inside streams, discover streams your friends like, and opt out of tweeting comments
Context & Ripple Effects
Meerkat launched in March with a simple premise: stream live video straight to your Twitter followers, borrowing Twitter's social graph rather than building one. Within weeks it was in a feature race with Periscope, which answered with its own stream-discovery improvements and a follower-only comment mode in early April.
This update is Meerkat playing catch-up and differentiation at once: in-stream follows let viewers assemble a following without leaving a broadcast, friend-based discovery surfaces streams through existing relationships, and the comment opt-out addresses the noise of auto-tweeting replies back onto Twitter. A year later the strategy is legible in hindsight — after shipping Android ahead of Periscope and opening a developer platform, Meerkat ultimately abandoned livestreaming altogether to chase a standalone video social network.
First-order effects
- Viewers can now grow a Meerkat-native following directly inside streams, reducing dependence on the Twitter graph the app was originally built to borrow.
- Users who found auto-tweeted comments noisy can silence them, cutting Meerkat's footprint on Twitter timelines where much of its virality originated.
Second-order effects
- The discovery features put Meerkat head-to-head with Periscope's own discovery push, turning stream recommendation into the competitive front rather than raw broadcasting reach.
- Building an in-app social graph sets up the developer platform Meerkat opens weeks later, giving third parties tools to differentiate against Periscope rather than compete feature-for-feature.
Third-order effects
- The arc from Twitter-borrowed distribution to owned social graph to eventual pivot off livestreaming illustrates the structural risk for apps built on another platform's audience — when the host controls the graph, the guest app must either own its relationships or exit the category.
The trend: Livestreaming apps are racing to convert borrowed social graphs into owned ones, and Meerkat's in-stream follows are one step in a race it would ultimately leave by pivoting to a video social network.