Member Article

Meerkat Madness

Meerkats are no longer exclusively commercially associated with Insurance comparison sites, or movies- or Coronation Street for that matter.

It has spawned a new verb – Meerkatting – and a craze that is sweeping the internet.

Here’s the definition for Meerkatting in the Urban dictionary:

“Standing up from your seat to get a better look at some fuss going on elsewhere usually in an office peering over the cubicle to get a better view.“

But now it’s a video streaming craze – a sort of live, ‘fly on the wall’, peek-behind-the-scenes of people carrying out their daily deeds – or rehearsing for them live in front of an audience via iPhones and iPads.

That is, if you are lucky enough to get in when a live stream actually streams. Clearly their servers have been hammered by traffic recently, and the streams are becoming difficult to access.

If you’re not in tech or haven’t yet heard, Meerkat allows you to broadcast live video with your phone. The app is available free on the iStore – just type in meerkat app and you are good to go!

Currently only iOS is supported, though you can view streams on Android- just look for an unofficial app that supports Meerkat.

And if you’re into just viewing and not broadcasting, you might as well skip the app and visit meerkatstreams.com in your browser.

Nay sayers and doom merchants are out in droves against Meerkat although this is to be expected with any new social media entrant.

Along with the proliferation of Meerkat streams comes the question mark over its long term use. The first ’Meerkat’ I watched was of meal prep in a commercial Swedish kitchen, followed by some marketing tips from a lady in the US.

A few Meerkats later and eventually I was watching ‘The Funk Fairy’ in the UK telling his client over the telephone how to download and install an app; all in all it was pretty remarkable.

The potential is huge – especially for copyright infringement lawsuits, which makes Meerkat an ideal prospect for acquisition!

Yes, Glass Frog Digital has its own Meerkat – come spy on us soon @GlassFrog or watch out for our tweets announcing broadcasts.

Simples.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Glass Frog .