Meerkat

Meerkat was a mobile application that enabled users to broadcast live video streams directly from their smartphones to their Twitter followers. Developed by Life on Air, Inc., the company was founded by Ben Rubin, who served as CEO, alongside Itai Danino and Uri Haramati. Rubin's background, which includes studies in architecture, informed his approach to building digital spaces designed for human connection. The core technology behind Meerkat was developed over two years for a previous, more complex video product called Yevvo.

Launched in February 2015, Meerkat rapidly gained traction, becoming a breakout success at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in March of that year. This surge in popularity attracted significant investor interest, leading to a $12 million Series B funding round from Greylock Partners in March 2015, which was part of a larger $14 million round. The app's functionality was straightforward: users signed in with their Twitter credentials, and a link to their live broadcast was automatically tweeted to their followers, who could then comment and interact via tweets. However, just weeks after its launch, Twitter acquired a competing app, Periscope, and restricted Meerkat's access to its social graph, hindering its primary growth mechanism.

Faced with intense competition from Twitter's Periscope and later Facebook Live, the one-to-many broadcasting model proved difficult to sustain as a daily user habit. Rubin and his team recognized that live broadcasting resonated more with celebrities and media outlets than with the average user. This realization prompted a strategic pivot. In late 2016, Life on Air officially shut down Meerkat and redirected its focus to a new application, Houseparty. Developed in secret over 10 months, Houseparty shifted from public broadcasts to private, spontaneous group video chats for up to eight people, aiming to create a more intimate and casual social experience. The new app was launched under a pseudonym to allow for quiet development and iteration based on user feedback.

Houseparty quickly found its audience, particularly among younger users, and secured $52 million in funding from Sequoia Capital in late 2016. The company's business model began to take shape with the introduction of in-app purchases for games. In June 2019, Houseparty was acquired by Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition was seen as a strategic move to integrate Houseparty's social video technology into Epic's ecosystem. Following the acquisition, Sima Sistani, who had joined from Tumblr, was the CEO. The app saw a massive surge in popularity during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. Despite its success, Epic Games announced the shutdown of Houseparty in September 2021, ceasing operations the following month. The decision was made to integrate the Houseparty team and its technology more deeply into Epic's broader plans for developing social interactions within its own metaverse.

Keywords: Meerkat, Houseparty, Life on Air, Ben Rubin, live video streaming, social video chat, group video chat, mobile app, SXSW 2015, Periscope, Epic Games, pivot, acquisition, shutdown, social networking, Sima Sistani, Greylock Partners, Sequoia Capital, live broadcast, private chat, Yevvo, Itai Danino, Uri Haramati, social media history, tech pivot