Twitter Is Pushing Celebrities And Publishers To Stop Using Meerkat
Twitter is doing whatever it can to help its live video streaming acquisition Periscope beat independent competitor Meerkat. Multiple sources tell TechCrunch that Twitter has been contacting celebrities who use Meerkat …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the escalation of a squeeze Twitter began a month earlier, when it confirmed cutting off Meerkat's access to its social graph right as the Periscope acquisition landed at SXSW. Since then the picture has darkened for the independent app: The Verge reported Meerkat's usage already sliding under competition from Periscope and weak stream recommendations, while CEO Ben Rubin publicly defended the company's path forward.
What's new here is the method — rather than just walling off infrastructure, Twitter is now working the demand side directly, leaning on celebrities and publishers to switch apps. It matters because Meerkat's entire value proposition was borrowed audience: without the graph and without star broadcasters, there is little left to differentiate.
First-order effects
- Celebrities and publishers using Meerkat face direct pressure from Twitter to migrate to Periscope, threatening Meerkat with the loss of the marquee broadcasters who drove its SXSW hype.
Second-order effects
- With the social graph cut off and stars defecting, Meerkat must either find distribution outside Twitter's orbit or fade — and publishers recalibrate where they invest live-video effort, consolidating around Periscope by default.
Third-order effects
- The episode shows platform owners can strangle apps built on their APIs through a mix of infrastructure cuts and commercial pressure — though the 2020 reports of app-code suggesting Periscope itself might be shut down underline how little even the favored winner ultimately controlled its fate inside Twitter.
The trend: Live video in 2015 is consolidating from independent apps into platform-owned features, with API access and celebrity relationships as the levers that decide winners.