Meerkat built a new app under a pseudonym, and almost 1M people are using it

http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/28/13081014/meerkat-houseparty-video-app

by riqbal • 10 years ago

85 36 10 years ago

theverge.com

mrlatinos• 10 years ago

The sad part is that it's just another idea for Facebook and Twitter to steal again.

rhizome• 10 years ago

I'll be shocked if either of them are able to implement video multichat before I retire.

throwaway2016a• 10 years ago

Can you clarify why? I'm curious.

coldtea2• 10 years ago

Several apps already do it -- including Skype and Facetime (and Hangouts, IIRC, though I don't use it so not sure). So why not them?

cocktailpeanuts2• 10 years ago

How is this technically different from TinyChat?

Is it the social graph? (Friends or friends of friends)

In that case, how does this have advantage over Facebook if Facebook ever decides to build one like this?

I hope they have some other advantage that can't be easily replicated.

dannyr• 10 years ago

You know that Facebook tried to copy Snapchat right?

We all know how that turned out.

csolorio• 10 years ago

True, but it seems like their second attempt with Instagram stories is going well.

cocktailpeanuts2• 10 years ago

Yeah I think they're doing a hell of a job with their Instagram stories. I've been observing how people are sharing less content on Snapchat stories nowadays

lightedman3• 10 years ago

"How is this technically different from TinyChat?"

TinyChat is Flash-based. Since this is meant for SmartPhones, no flash, I'd wager.

"I hope they have some other advantage that can't be easily replicated."

They don't. Everything this thing does, Camfrog pretty much did on desktop 15-ish years ago and several years back on mobile.

whoisjuan• 10 years ago

Their barriers to entry, from a technical perspective, are too low... The possible scenarios for this product are:

1) Fad Success like the one experimented by YikYak (same target demographic) and then struggling to maintain growth and traction.

2) Getting copied by Snap, Facebook, Twitter (perhaps even Google now that they have Allo) and repeating Meerkat's faith.

3) Reaching an inflection point that allows them to have growth and traction (like the one Snapchat had in its early years) and had decent exit by being acquired by any of the companies in #2.

It's hard to tell which one would be, but as I said the barriers to entry are very low. I would expect Facebook or another big company releasing something similar in the short term.

lanewinfield• 10 years ago

When it comes to social networks, when has it ever been about technical barriers? Facebook could (and did) copy Snapchat at any point through its rise, but it failed—and not because of technical issues.

HillaryBriss• 10 years ago

Six or eight faces (video feed rectangles) on the mobile device simultaneously. Each rectangle needs to be information rich. People will need to stare at the camera and get into just the right position to give that video feed rectangle a high signal to noise ratio.

You have to pay careful attention while you're using it. It's like attending a video conference. How often and for how long do you want to do that?

nitely• 10 years ago

Uhm, the important bit is the audio. The vídeo is helpful to know people is still there...

coldtea2• 10 years ago

Can private broadcasting succeed where public live-streaming failed?

No. Nobody cares that much for their friends (especially their hundreds of "friends" on social media), or has that time to spare on real-time streaming. For the times when this is actually needed, there are tons of videoconference apps.

Next question?

rescripting• 10 years ago

What seems powerful about this idea is its more like a common physical space you gather in with your friends than a phone or video conference. You show up "in the house" (treehouse, cafeteria, club, call it whatever) and some of your friends are there, some aren't. You don't have to call people up and interaction just happens naturally more like it would if you walked into a room of your friends.

I wrote off Snapchat with many of the same kind of flip dismissals and I was pretty wrong about how popular it would eventually be. I'm too old for this app, or even snapchat, but think back to when you were a teen and remember what it was like to just shoot the shit with friends after class. Thats the kind of interaction they seem to be trying to facilitate.

personjerry2• 10 years ago

But why wouldn't they just... go there?

lightedman3• 10 years ago

This is just a lame version of Camfrog, almost 15 years after Camfrog was made.

rokhayakebe• 10 years ago

Which products do you use today that were the first/original in their categories?

lightedman3• 10 years ago

Newsgroups. IRC. University E-mail (though it's no longer done on a shared system like it was in the 60s and 70s.) Probably more if I sat down and actually tried remembering.

vit05• 10 years ago

They have come to the same conclusion as Blab Ceo.

"Because most live streams aren’t interesting enough to justify stopping what they are doing to watch your broadcast." https://medium.com/@shaanvp/blab-is-dead-long-live-blab-d2f7...

na85• 10 years ago

The important question is "How are they going to monetize?"

All the talk of "candid conversations" sure doesn't give me the warm-and-fuzzies when I consider that the only way to monetize this is abusing user metadata or scraping the video feeds for trending topics.

davidpatrick• 10 years ago

Those are hardly the only ways of monetizing. There a range of premium services you could offer in app, for one the crowd who is using it to collaborate on schoolwork has a load of potential.

weixiyen• 10 years ago

Hmm, I think that's probably the least important question right now. I want to know:

- is it 1 million returning daily users, or 1 million registered users?

- percentage of their registered users in the past month that come back every day (basically, are users addicted, or not really?).

- How many times users open the app every day and average length of each video session?

I've seen the app there before and tried it out, very nice onboarding flow that seemed like it could be viral, but I don't think it maintained its app store position.

If they are closing in on 1m returning daily actives, that's pretty sweet. If it's 1 million total users who ever signed up, that's actually a bit of a concern given how many downloads they should have gotten when they were topping the app store charts.

I'm far to old to use this app with my friends but it seemed like a much more friendly version of Google Hangouts, which my sister, who is in their target demographic, uses quite often.

They are definitely onto something, just literally follow any kid around, and they all like to video chat with their friends in real-time, and they snapchat doesn't solve that specific problem for them (yet).

munificent• 10 years ago

"Everything in this new generation is trying to come back to what feels real," she says. "So we’re making a bet that live video is as real as it gets."

Oh God, I weep for the world we're making for ourselves.

Last I checked, putting down your phone and actually being present with someone is as real as it gets. But I guess it's hard to monetize, gamify, and micro-transact that.

jsprogrammer• 10 years ago

Nah, casinos typically seek monopoly status; but, it is easy to run your own games as well.

cel1ne• 10 years ago

The world we're making ourselves is a permanently distracted and casual one.

What we'd need again is being bored.

TeMPOraL• 10 years ago

But I guess it's hard to monetize, gamify, and micro-transact that.

It's easy. It's been the job of pubs, bars, restaurants, theme parks, sports events, etc. since time immemorial.

What is hard to do is to make it a high-growth business that would attract VC money. That's the source of this bullshit.

rakoo• 10 years ago

Sure, it's just so easy to put down your phone and meet your friends a few dozen/hundred/thousand kilometers away. It's just so easy to make a plan with 7 other people, everybody is free all the time to drive/fly to the local pub to have random chit-chat about nothing and then drive/fly back.

Sometimes you have to look beyond your own situation and think that you may not be the target, which means this may solve problems you don't have and be convenient for a scenario you never encounter.

userbinator• 10 years ago

My first thought about this is "yet another proprietary telepresence app"? It's a bit sad that although the IETF and ITU have developed plenty of standard protocols for things like this (SIP, RTP, H.323, etc.), which would've allowed for great interoperability in the same way that the Internet standardised on IP/TCP/TLS/HTTP(S), others have chosen to create their own closed protocols and their own isolated userbases. IM is the other related service that would've been well-served by standard protocols, but instead turns out to be scattered among different providers all with userbases that don't completely overlap. One of the comments at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12620468 about having half a dozen IM clients is very relevant here.

At least email is still pretty standardised, but in some ways it feels like the Internet is breaking apart. :-/

frik• 10 years ago

Why do I read about HouseParty app on HN only in Oct 2016? Recode featured it in June 2016, other websites in Sept - as I found out today. :(

I am little interested about yesterday's news or last months news.

What other websites would you suggest beside HN to read about latest startup trends?

akhatri_aus• 10 years ago

HN isn't about the latest news, because the comments are always about how the idea is terrible or useless and technically inept.

Even when there's a million users, or crazy growth that doesn't change apparently. There's a saying somewhere now that if HN hates it its a good sign. This is probably a test of it. Snapchat & Twitter in the hall of fame.

ChoHag• 10 years ago

Getting a million users isn't all that hard. The test is whether you keep them.

Meerkat built a new app under a pseudonym, and almost 1M people are using it

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