Meerkat is emerging as SXSW’s breakout app, featuring highly in the Interactive and Entertainment/Film portions of the festival.

What Is Meerkat?

Meerkat launched a few weeks before SXSW began, but has quickly become the app to have at SXSW and has seen a spike in Tweets and users since SXSW began. The app, which for now is only compatible with Apple iOS, allows users to log in through Twitter and stream live video to followers.

Twitter Cuts Meerkat’s Access To Social Graph

After Meerkat’s initial success, it hit a bit of a bump when Twitter suddenly announced that they would be cutting off the app’s access to the Twitter social graph. Initially, if a user began streaming live via the Meerkat app, it would send notifications to all that user’s followers who had downloaded Meerkat. But, by pulling Meerkat’s access to the social graph, Twitter made that feature impossible. Now users will have to rebuild a social network of followers on the Meerkat app separate from Twitter. (But they can still log in using their Twitter accounts and a link to their live-stream will still appear on Twitter.)

While Meerkat was thrown a bit when they were given only a two-hour notice about the change, co-founder Ben Rubin said they anticipated the move. “We are not naïve, we knew it was coming. We thought that we would at least get a week notice – a fair game,” Rubin told Fast Company.

Twitter appears to be acquiring their own live-streaming app, Periscope, and Rubin said he sees the move both as a reasonable business tactic and an aggressive one, given the minimal notice.

“I get it that when you own the house, you own the rules. You can say, I’m about to launch my own app, and I don’t want you to have the graph. But I think the two hours was a little aggressive and not working toward building a community,” Rubin added.

While many worry that being cut off from Twitter would harm Meerkat in the longrun, the app has continued to grow in popularity. According to Meerkat, the app continued to grow, earning a 30% growth in users after Twitter pulled their social graph function. However, critics are skeptical to call the app a smash success – all the hype from SXSW is certainly helping to boost the numbers.

Celebs On Meerkat

Celebrities from Jimmy Fallon to Julia Louis-Dreyfus have also given the app a nice publicity boost by using it for impromptu Q&A sessions with fans or video messages.

Article by Olivia Truffaut-Wong

Olivia Truffaut-Wong was born and raised in Berkeley, California, where she developed her love of all things entertainment. After moving to New York City to earn her degree in Film Studies, she stayed on the East Coast to follow her passion and become an entertainment writer. She lives on a diet of television, movies and food.