The Big Impact of Real-Time Technology on Marketing
Many people have not yet heard of what is potentially the next big thing in digital marketing and social media. Real-time video has taken the digital world by storm by offering interactivity on a whole new level.
Platforms such as Meerkat and Periscope allow live video to be tweeted, with the potential to generate a marketing buzz being high. Much like Vine and Snapchat, the attraction of short videos is strong, but the key point of this type of technology is that users can connect to people instantaneously and share in live moments.
Naturally, this has excited marketers across the globe. Apps such as Snapchat have become more common as a marketing tool, so it stands to reason sharing live moments at premieres, product launches and other big events will become another weapon in the marketing world’s arsenal for attracting attention and gaining fans.
From a social media perspective, the potential for the creation of viral content is incredibly high. The two platforms are highly competitive, with the difference between Meerkat and Periscope seeming relatively negligible. However, there is a minor detail that differentiates the two: Meerkat’s live stream disappears for good once the live stream has been completed, whereas Periscope allows you to rewatch the video for the next 24 hours. Meerkat potentially has the advantage with respect to viral content, given the exclusivity of the stream and the need to watch it as it is happening to be able to see it at all. That being said, the sharing of Periscope’s content is easier as the videos are available for longer.
The two platforms came into existence at very similar periods of time, making the future of both projects quite intriguing. Periscope was bought out by Twitter in March of this year for the sum of approximately $100 million, giving it a certain amount of clout. However, the popularity of independent rival Meerkat is undeniable, given that it had 60,000 users within 8 days of its launch. Periscope was not available for the wider public to utilise in the initial period after its purchase, something that might hinder it in the days to come.
With both apps competing, it seems only time will tell which will be the next big platform. For certain, however, is the fact that live-streaming videos on social media will soon be as popular as any other kind of content that has become the norm in the past decade.
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