Meerkat and Periscope are fun apps but beware the sting in the tail
The noise around South by Southwest (SXSW) darling Meerkat was deafening before I started reading even a whisper of potential issues with live streaming. Add to this a competitor product from Twitter itself (named Periscope) and you have the perfect storm for a breathless media furore with none of the insight needed to help make informed decisions about either tool’s potential use.
With the continued popularity of Google Hangouts, car cams, Facetime, and drone footage it’s easy to see the positives of such technologies, but live-streaming is a double-edged sword. It can cut you multiple ways if you aren’t careful.
Before we get gloomy, let’s look at the bright side: in the short time the apps have been available there have been some smart uses of both, including product demos, launches, interviews and, interestingly, some citizen journalism of Sunday’s collapse of three buildings and blaze in New York.
Apps like Meerkat and Periscope are ushering in a new age of instant, in a world where we thought we had instant already. It’s exciting – a game-changer for news, brands and, of course, organisations like the police and political parties.
The need to embrace these apps quickly is clear. “If your audiences suddenly jump onto these new platforms, you’re going to miss out on the conversations that happen and the opportunity to drive traffic,” according to Stephen Waddington, chief engagement officer of PR agency Ketchum.
Onto the less bright: The biggest issue of course is copyright – the least understood law when it comes to agencies and brands and the easiest to break without realising that you have done so. Both Periscope and Meerkat (and most other competitors in this space, including UStream) shift the onus of copyright onto the user.
The reasons for this are pretty simple but also lofty – real-time video is hard to parse quickly for infringing materials (like YouTube does) but the law stands: if you don’t own it, you probably aren’t allowed to stream it.
Speaking with Robin Hilton, a media law partner at Sheridans, it is clear that now the bar for entry has been lowered the technology poses some serious issues for brands and could also undermine revenue streams for companies reliant on content. “While [these apps] could record revolutions unfolding in the street, it could also unlawfully show concerts and football matches, or broadcast fist-fights and intimate moments.
“Brands need to watch out: they don’t want to be pushing illegal material. So they had better control what is being shown, and clear any rights. Advertisers should ensure that whatever they are streaming does not get out of control and thus convey messages they had never intended.”
Hilton spoke with me before Sunday night, when I tuned into Periscope to see what the world was sharing. More than 200 people were watching a David Guetta concert via a “helpful” onlooker (from the VIP box no less). The crowd were ravenous – “Turn left”, “Zoom in” and “Can you get closer?” popped up as I watched the set for about 10 minutes before switching out.
The quality of image was not HD and the sound was certainly not Dolby Surround. Instead viewers got what I term as “G-nough”, created from the Google News effect: people get enough of an experience to gain value but not in the optimal way to maximise revenue for most parties.
Beyond copyright, live-streaming services continue to highlight other serious issues surrounding privacy, ownership, permission and, mostly, monetisation. Ultimately more Periscope (and Meerkat) is good business for Twitter but what about the music companies?
I have spoken with several brands in the last couple of weeks and few have fully (or even moderately) thought through the risks of live-streaming beyond simple things such as broadcast-bombing, where someone in the background hijacks the broadcast.
Recording is the biggest area of confusion with these services. Beyond infringing by streaming, users (and brands) can suffer should they upload the live-stream for later use on other platforms. Many brands and agency folk I have spoken with believe, incorrectly, that because there can be no final product (ie a recording or upload) that things like copyright do not apply or have been magically taken care of by the app. They have not, and it is a complex area depending on where you are in the world.
There is of course, another concern: quality. Most brands are not providing a well-thought-out or relevant experience and simply broadcasting things that have little value and provide little return on investment to either party. Live-streaming is as much about withholding as it is about opening up, and without a clear strategy and plan (even one ruthlessly executed) it will ultimately disappoint one or both parties.
It’s a bold brand that chooses to spend time, money and additional resources without thinking long-term about a platform’s viability (considering there are lots of other options available) and conducts risky behaviour that could have serious financial consequences.
Live-streaming is not going away and is valuable to audiences (and businesses), especially when the barrier to entry and costs are so low. However for the immediate future, as it does not have content filters or watermarking technology like YouTube and Facebook, both Meerkat and Periscope are fun apps with a potentially deadly sting in their tail: that free-to-use app might just cost you a pretty penny if Kanye comes calling for royalties.
Paul Armstrong runs HERE/FORTH and is the creator of C_NCENTRATE and @themediaisdying. You can follow him on Twitter @paul__armstrong
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