Live streaming video from a smartphone may soon be known as “meerkatting” thanks to a new app that allows anyone with an iPhone to become a roving reporter.
The free application called Meerkat has become a virtual overnight sensation since its low-key arrival on Apple Inc’s online App Store late last month, winning over journalists, politicians, self-anointed pundits, social media celebrities and others.
Meerkat integrates with Twitter, allowing users of the messaging platform to launch live video streams with a single touch of an on-screen button.
Photo: Bloomberg
In the rapid-fire Twitterverse, Meerkat has become a sudden hit with tens of thousands of users trying it.
Meerkat “marries the wide potential of livestreaming with the instant and social strengths of Twitter. Two great tastes that go so well together,” Hawaii-based consultant and blogger Ryan Ozawa wrote.
“Imagine the applications for breaking news. Imagine deploying Meerkat at an event, with broadcasters and viewers easily interacting throughout. I could easily see myself falling head over heels in love with Meerkat,” he wrote.
The app uses the name and image of a meerkat, which is a long-necked carnivorous relative of the mongoose that lives in the deserts of southern Africa.
The news blog TechCrunch described Meerkat as “the livestreaming app Twitter should have built.”
TWITTER RIVAL?
Twitter appears to have taken notice. The one-to-many messaging platform announced on Friday that it was buying the maker of a rival video streaming app called Periscope, which is in beta testing and has not yet been released to the public.
“Excited to officially welcome @periscopeco to the Twitter team. Can’t wait for everyone to see what they’ve built!” Twitter product vice president Kevin Weil tweeted on Friday.
Twitter did not release details about the deal, but media reports said Twitter was paying between US$50 million and US$100 million for the app, which has so far been available by invitation only.
Additionally, Buzzfeed.com reported on Friday that Twitter was cutting Meerkat’s access to some of its features.
It was not immediately clear whether Twitter would maintain Periscope as an independent app or integrate it into the platform. Both companies are based in San Francisco.
“That is a worry for Meerkat,” Danny Sullivan, founder of the blog Search Engine Land, said of Twitter buying Periscope.
“If Twitter gets their own live video, they will have a tendency to want to favor that,” he said.
MEERKATTED
Sullivan “meerkatted” — some are calling it “meercasting” — a stroll around the South By Southwest Festival (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, shortly after arriving there on Friday.
“It is kind of neat to give a taste of South-By to people who have never seen it and want a taste of it,” Sullivan said, referring to the festival by its informal name. “It works surprisingly well; it is very impressive how easy it was to get going with the live stream.”
With Meerkat, a tweet is fired off containing a link that anyone can click to be connected to the stream while it is in progress. Tiny profile icons pop up to show who is tuning in to broadcasts.
“At one point we had 110 people all walking around with me,” Sullivan said.
Videos are available only at Meerkat while they are live, but the app gives users the option of saving what they have recorded on their devices.
NEWSMAKING
On Friday, an array of Meerkat streams flowing from SXSW included casual tours of Google and PayPal lounges along with impromptu interviews there by journalists who have seized on the application as a tool for giving intimate glimpses at news gathering.
The Iowa governor’s office announced on Friday that it will use Meerkat to live-stream press conferences and other events on Twitter.
“By using the Meerkat app, Iowans will be able to join us as we tour communities following natural disasters; as we visit a small business, listen in to our weekly press conferences or even as we hit the trail for our annual 99-county tour,” Iowa Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts