Meerkat is dying – and it’s taking U.S. tech journalism with it

BGR ^ | 3/30/2015

[kingu]

About three days after it received a lavish new funding round, Meerkat died an ugly and embarrassing death. It is hard to decide whether the Great Meerkat Debacle that has unfolded over the past week is a tragedy or a comedy — probably a bit of both.

The mobile streaming app that had whipped U.S. tech journalists into a frenzy announced $14 million in new funding on Thursday. Money poured in from Jared Leto, Greylock Partners and other illustrious sources. On the same day, Twitter launched its rival streaming app called Periscope. Apparently, investors didn’t stop to ponder why Meerkat people rushed to cash in so aggressively only a month after the app had debuted.

Well, we now know why.

[kingu]

Seen the hype on local news for this "revolutionary" app, though of course nothing about how few downloaded it. Even today, there are still shill articles about how to add Meerkat buttons to your website, about how it will revolutionize customer service and destroy the phone companies.

[Doogle]

"DYING?..who's dying?"

[Radagast the Fool]

Being a major Meerkat Manor fan, I nearly dropped dead myself when I read the headline!
Then I saw it was about some stupid app...WHEW!!!!!!!!!

(LOL!!) :)

[Red Badger]

Okay, where did the $14 million go?.................

[kingu]

Into buying a position in a company that, according to all media reports, was booming across the app universe, and would be the Next Big Thing. Only it had already peaked and crashed when the check was handed over.

Tech oriented media is creating fiction, luring in main stream media which parrots it, developers cash in, and onto the next big project. And this is happening with alarming regularity.

I’m really curious to see how long until some actual investigative reporting is done examining finances and figures out that a lot of these might be paid endorsements which share in the payoff.

[Red Badger]

Someone didn’t do their homework...............

[skinkinthegrass]

*Kewl!*

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks kingu. What is Meercat, exactly?

[RansomOttawa]

Thanks kingu. What is Meercat, exactly?

It's an app that enables you to stream live video to your Twitter followers.

[__rvx86]

It’s the 90s all over again...

[kingu]

An app which allows instant streaming to your twitter followers, notifies them of the broadcast, and, you know, does most of what Periscope does, just a little less intuitively. And it uses Twitter for ‘live conversations’ while you're broadcasting, so it spams everyone, rather than containing it to the broadcast like Periscope does.

Oh, and about 5% as popular as Periscope, but it was MeerKat which got all the popular press about how awesome it is, plus landed 14 million in venture capitol just days after it crashed off the top 1,000 app downloads.

Goes well to show what happens when you line up a whole lot of tech press into believing you've got awesome sauce, and fail to gain traction..

[minnesota_bound]

I have an a money making app for all you guys to invest in.
It is called “APP”

Please send money to my Kickstarter page.

[SunkenCiv]

That explains it, I’m not on Twitter, nor do I have any desire to be. It reminds me of the old pre-DejaNews news groups, but without the sense of organization. ;’)

[SunkenCiv]

Whoops, and thanks also to RansomOttawa, and to kingu in case I’d forgotten