Applications like Periscope and Meerkat are said to have the ability to become the future of live news broadcast, as it provides end users with a tool to do the above said thing. There have been instances in the past that have shown the world so as to what the true capability of these applications is. In previous posts, I discussed how to get started with these two applications, and in this post I’ll share some of the differences between Meerkat and Periscope that I noticed and I feel are important for the end users to know.
A bit of history to start with
Twitter acquired Persicope in March 2015 for a reported $100 million, and then relaunched it under its own app store account; on May 26th, 2015 persicope was released for android as well.
Meerkat is a relatively new application as it was launched in February 2015. The company raised $12 million in venture capital funding from Greylock Partners in March 2015.
Which one has more downloads
Meerkat has only 100,000-500,000 downloads according to the android play store, this count is way lesser than the mammoth 1,000,000-5,000,000 downloads that Periscope has had on the android platform. This difference in count is quite substantial despite the fact that Periscope was launched for android way after Meerkat made its debut on the play store in February 2015.
This clearly shows the user base Periscope has created over the past month.
Which one has better rating
Meerkat, on Google play store, has a net rating of 3.3 by 3,424 people and has a lot of mixed reviews. Not everyone seems to like this particular application, a net rating of 3.3 signifies that people are facing bugs or maybe they need some improvements that they feel the developers can make.
Periscope has a better rating on Google play store than Meerkat has, it has been rated 3.6 by a total of 13,873 people. Its better reviews can be a result of its easy to use functions and a less buggy interface as compared to that of Meerkat.
Who all have promoted or used this application (celebrities)
Meerkat: Meerkat Debuted on the website ‘Product Hunt’ and had a widespread use during the South by Southwest Interactive Festival. Its owners happened to be successful in bagging a big exclusive with Madonna and there are a number of other celebrities who have used or can be seen now and then using this particular application. Some of these other celebrities include Ashton Kutcher, Shaquille O’Neal and Afrojack.
Persicope: It was used by Max Foster of CNN during his coverage of the birth of Princess Charlotte of Cambridge, showing to the world how these apps could change the face of journalism in near future. Some other celebrities that have been seen using Periscope include Ellen DeGeneres, slash and Michael Bloomberg
Hearts
These is not much concept of heats in Meerkat, there is just one heart shaped icon when you watch a live stream and if you press it you’ll see that in the comments section your like would get mentioned.
The concept of hearts is pretty different in Periscope, here there is no dedicated icon for posting a like or a heart, and instead, you have to tap on the screen to post a heart. You can post as many hearts as you want, provided you are ready to tap on your screen again and again. Here, hearts fly from the bottom right of the screen to the middle right of the screen and would seem to fade away as they get to their destination.
Hearts are a onetime affair in Meerkat, whereas you can put out as many hearts as you want in Periscope.
Commenting
In Periscope, once you enter a comment, it stays there for a very small amount of time on the screen and then vanishes; it works the same as hearts do. You cannot scroll between old and new comments, once a comment vanishes it can’t be accessed and maybe the intent of this application is for you to read a comment at a time and reply to that, and not pile up a big junk of worthless comments and then scroll between the old and the new ones to find interesting and important ones.
Comments on Meerkat stay there for a time long enough to view them after sometime. Moreover, you can scroll through the comments in Meerkat. So, if you are up-to something and you have missed some of the comments that your viewers made, then you can always scroll up to see all that stuff.
Retweet
In Meerkat you straightaway get the option of retweeting/replaying on the bottom of the screen, pressing it will cause a pop up to emerge asking you if you would want to restream and retweet it.
In Periscope when you are watching a live stream, all you need to do is click on the icon at the bottom right and then press on share broadcast, it will then ask you if you wish to share it with specific people or with all your followers.
Users Watched
In Meerkat whenever you stream a live video, you’ll see ‘x people’ and ‘y people here now’ written near the top left corner. X and y both signify some numbers,’ x people’ signifies the total number of people who were or are there watching your live stream, whereas ‘y people here now’ signifies the total number of people who are watching your stream at any given point of time.
In Periscope you only get to see the number of live users that you have on your stream.
Users online
In Meerkat you get to see the live users as small icons near the top section of your screen.
In Periscope you get to see the live users by clicking on a small icon present at the bottom right corner of your screen.
Streaming a video
To stream a live video on Periscope, you need to click on an orange icon on the bottom right corner of your screen and then enter the title you would want to give to your broadcast. There is no option of scheduling a broadcast in Periscope.
On Meerkat, you’ll find the option to stream your video on the home screen itself, there is no need to click on any fancy icon. For this you need to just enter what’s on your mind or what you think should come up along with your video.
An additional feature that only Meerkat offers is the option of scheduling a stream, for doing it you just need to click on the Stream option as can be seen in the image below and then pick the time at which you wish to schedule your broadcast. The option to add a photo allows you to add a photo which will then accompany your scheduled post on Meerkat.
SEE ALSO: 14 Cool Instagram tricks
The Winner
Twitter has tried a lot of different things to make sure that periscope has a hand over Meerkat, it has asked a lot of celebrities to consider periscope over Meerkat, moreover it went on to forbid Meerkat from using its social graph in March 2015. On the other hand, Meerkat is trying hard to prove to be a tough competition for periscope, but the user experience periscope provides is far better than what Meerkat offers. The bugs that one encounters while using Meerkat are more than what one encounters while using periscope. Periscope also has a better feel to it. It is a personal opinion and might differ among different individuals, so kindly download and check both the applications for yourself.
