Meerkat Launches Developer Platform To Differentiate From Periscope
Context & Ripple Effects
Meerkat spent March racing Twitter's own app: it launched first as a side project, then layered on social features like following people inside streams while BuzzFeed introduced the world to Periscope, Twitter's new live video app. By April the two had reached parity on tweet volume, with Periscope's explosive launch settling near Meerkat's daily level.
With feature parity achieved and Periscope holding Twitter's distribution, Meerkat's answer is to change the game rather than win it: a developer platform that turns its app into infrastructure. It also just won a round on reach, launching an Android app ahead of Periscope — so the platform push extends a strategy of competing where the bigger rival isn't.
First-order effects
- Developers gain official access to Meerkat's live-streaming stack, letting third parties build on top of the service instead of merely using it — a direct counter to Periscope's closed, Twitter-embedded model.
- Meerkat's differentiation burden shifts from shipping consumer features (in-stream follows, comment controls) to attracting an external builder ecosystem, a slower but harder-to-copy moat.
Second-order effects
- Ustream had already moved first on this exact play in March, opening its internal SDK and API so anyone could build a Meerkat-like app — now the two platforms are bidding for the same developer mindshare, forcing Ustream to compete on maturity rather than novelty.
- Twitter faces pressure to respond in kind or concede that Periscope's advantage is purely distribution; if daily usage has settled at parity, features alone no longer separate the two.
Third-order effects
- If platform openness beats distribution once in live video, the category reorganizes around who hosts the developer layer — with incumbent streaming providers like Ustream positioned as the neutral rails both consumer apps quietly depend on.
- The pattern suggests live-video competition settles not on app features but on whether the platform owner can lock up third-party innovation before the distribution giant copies it — a genuine open question given Twitter's control of the tweet stream both apps ride on.
The trend: Live-streaming apps are shifting from a feature arms race to a platform war, where opening APIs to developers is the only durable answer to a rival with built-in distribution.