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Meerkat (app)

Meerkat was a mobile app that allowed users to broadcast live video streaming through their mobile devices. Once signed up, Meerkat users had the option of linking their Facebook and Twitter accounts, to stream directly to their followers as soon as they went live. The app was available for both iOS and Android.

For other uses, see Meerkat.

Original author(s)

Ben Rubin

Life On Air, Inc.

iOS: 1.3 (May 2, 2015 (2015-05-02)[1]) [±]
Android: 0.9.6 (May 10, 2015 (2015-05-10)[2]) [±]

Unity

The app was released in February 2015, and quickly found popularity after its debut on the website Product Hunt, as well as widespread use during the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in March 2015.[3]


On October 4, 2016, Meerkat was shut down.[4] It has been replaced by Houseparty.

Twitter reaction[edit]

In March 2015, weeks after the release of Meerkat, Twitter cut off Meerkat's access to its social graph, then announced the acquisition of the competing app Periscope.[6] Twitter publicly launched Periscope on March 26, 2015. Apart from providing the similar functionality of live-streaming to users' Twitter followers, Periscope also gives users an option to let anyone play the stream back.[7][8]