Meerkat is no more, and Facebook goes to work

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Anyone remember Meerkat, the livestreaming app? It was Periscope 1.0, feted at SXSW ,and now, officially dead. Recode has a thorough autopsy report, and Meerkat’s parent company, Life On Air, is still in business.

The most telling quote I read about it all came from co-founder Ben Rubin: “The category of broadcast (one-to-many) wasn’t breaking as a daily habit…it’s too far away from the everyday user.”

In other words, if people aren’t using it, it doesn’t matter how much love you get from the press.

JanFacebook

Facebook goes to work…and the store…and to VR
I have a confession to make here, everyone—I’m really not trying to flood this blog with posts about Facebook. It’s just hard to write about social media without talking about the 9,000-pound gorilla in the room.

And it’s been a busy gorilla lately.  So let’s hit the highlights:

  • Privacy? What privacy? The EU isn’t fooling around when it comes to privacy laws
  • Marketplace is open for business – I’ve had this in my app for months now, so I didn’t realize it was a new feature. Facebook launched The Marketplace, a classified session similar to Craigslist. Users promptly flooded it with drugs, guns and live animals. Pretty sure this is why we can’t have nice things.
  • Facebook for Work moves beyond a pilot – The logic seems to be “hey, everyone knows how to use Facebook already.” The release says they’ll offer the analytics to companies who pay for an internal network, but given Facebook’s data-hungry ways, I’m very curious to know what else they’ll do with it.
  • Moving to VR – One of the strengths of social media is that it helps people stay in touch despite distance. A demo at the recent Oculus conference made it pretty clear that Facebook considers Virtual Reality a way to bring people together.
  • Events will be a standalone app – It could just be my empty social calendar, but I don’t quite get this one.  Are they coming after Eventbrite?
  • Instagram turns six – And no, they won’t be going back to a chronological timeline.
“Chatbots don’t judge you.”

To close this out on a non-Facebook note, this is my favorite use of chatbots to date. DuoLingo will let users practice languages with chatbots, since many found the idea of practicing with a complete stranger intimidating. Plus, chatbots won’t make fun of your bad accent. ¡Excelente!

About the author:
Tara Saylor is a communications manager by day, grad student by night and curious all the time. She is also a web nerd and recovering copywriter. Tara focuses on the channels that enable communication and using metrics to improve communication effectiveness. She tweets about communication and combines as @AnokheeTara.