Let's Talk Livestreaming! The Graveyard, The Current Landscape & My Favorite New App!
I’m fascinated with livestreaming and livestreaming apps.
It all started for us with a text from my buddy Alex in March of 2015 asking me if I’d heard of Periscope… I didn’t know anything about livestreaming but I was instantly hooked and I knew immediately it would be good for Frameable Faces Photography - the brick and mortar studio I own with my wife Ally here in West Bloomfield, Michigan. A week into it I had already written a guest blog post about it and another one on our blog a week after that. What a wild ride Periscope was - it took us around the world virtually and around the country physically, including speaking on a panel at the Periscope Community Summit in San Francisco. We still have relationships we built in that community to this day…
Our Doug & Ally Morning Show is actually still going strong seven years later but boy has the landscape changed in that time… We’re now on our “official” third home for our daily livestream on most Tuesdays through Fridays somewhere between 9:30 - 11:30 AM EST because many livestream apps have proven to be flashes in the pan. Which leads me to the next feature of this post: THE LIVESTREAMING GRAVEYARD!!!
The Livestreaming Graveyard!
Okay so Vine wasn’t a livestreaming app but I thought we might as well include it on the Graveyard Homescreen along with the other app Twitter killed, Periscope.
Meerkat - what’s funny about Meerkat is that I never downloaded or used the app… and in those early days it was Periscope vs. Meerkat. I just suspected Periscope would win because of Twitter and for a time I was right. Meerkat launched in February of 2015 and died on October 4th, 2016. Here’s a reference to us being on Meerkat by Brian Fanzo that didn’t actually happen lol… Brian is currently killing it in the NFT space.
Periscope - Periscope will always be the true O.G. in terms of having the most impact for us and the one that truly changed our lives. To this day it was the most visceral experience we’ve come across on livestreaming. The initial explosion of camaraderie, buzz and flat out magic of that community was lightning in a bottle and you had to be there to understand. I don’t feel we’ll ever see the likes of that again. The company was started in February of 2014, acquired by Twitter in January of 2015, and died on March 31st, 2021. Twitter ultimately ruined it (just like they ruined Vine).
MeVee - Kind of funny - a lot of Periscopers were touting MeVee, but the biggest promoters were really promoting it in their own self-interests because they wanted to be the original trending streamers there. I never bothered to download it. It went live in January 2016. Not even sure when it died… the mevee domain name is available if you want it lol…
Blab - Blab was kinda cool for a minute - in its glitchy early days the developers were really working hard on it and adding new features seemingly on the fly while being pretty engaged with the community. The appeal of Blab was that you could have 4 streamers on at once in a 4 window grid. That’s also what sucked about Blab. Just like Clubhouse today (don’t get me started), everyone is always waiting for their turn to talk, and they are all talking to each other - not the people in the chat. Plus I always said that in 9 of 10 Blabs at least one of the four people on the Blab would suck. So what was the point? Well there wasn’t one for long. I’ll admit we had a bit of fun there but ultimately it didn’t sustain. Born August 2015 - Died on August 12th, 2016.
Busker - Busker was pretty slick. Very similar experience to Periscope and the quality seemed to be pretty good out of the gate (Periscope was largely a mess functionally for a while), and they had a much more robust monetization model for the livestreamers. Not totally sure why Busker fizzled out but here’s an article that says the owners claimed Apple and Google were demanding 30% of the tip money - who knows. Born October 2016 - Died September 15th, 2017
Happs - the latest casualty. As of this post Happs is on life support and the plug will be pulled on Cinco de Mayo (May 5th, 2022) - some party.
I want to talk about this one for a minute because when Periscope shut down this platform provided us with a soft landing. I thought the app was pretty slick with multicasting capabilities and we livestreamed there for a full year. It launched on January 1st, 2019 with a focus on being “a global community working together to change the face of live news. Happs is a live streaming news platform that covers top stories from around the world. Using Happs app, it alerts the community to global breaking or trending news events — this could be an article, tweet, image, or live video of the event.” Okay cool right? I guess that plan wasn’t really lighting the world on fire, but when Periscope shut down all the remaining Periscopers went to Happs and those guys were happy to have us. We were reenergized and excited for Happs after the long, slow demise of Periscope. They were game for the pivot we thrust on them by flooding them with new livestreamers and subscribers and they worked overtime to increase their servers to handle the traffic. They were actively engaged with the community, attending livestreams, having creators on Zooms to update us and get feedback, hosting their own livestreams with picks of the week - it was fantastic. They raised a new round of capital in June of 2021 to take it to the next level. Then……..the “next level” was a disaster. The new pivot was to suddenly focus on only creators with at least 1000 followers. They then said that those with less would be grandfathered in, but they didn’t really communicate this and the new rollout and interface was a mess. We tried to tell them this was a big mistake and they basically said nope - it’s not, and that they were doing what they had to do, they’ll understand if we leave and we would be welcomed back with open arms anytime. Everyone bailed. We stayed for a little while until we could find another platform that had the features and functionality we needed. Meanwhile on Happs we started noticing that only a few featured broadcasters were being shown on the homepage - most of whom we hadn’t seen before with ridiculously inflated numbers of viewers. The only livestreamers we would see would be playing guitars or piano. I found this on the Happs website - go ahead and read it:
Huh????????
What the HELL does that mean??? Yeah I mean I get it…. I’ll just stop listening to Pearl Jam so I can listen to a dude playing guitar in his living room because the “talent scouts” at Happs curated those guitar players who clicked a button indicating how talented they are. A long way from being “the face of live news” right? I guess it’s easy for me to say but these guys never had a handle on who they wanted to be or who they should be. I’m bummed about it because as harsh as I’m being here, I genuinely liked these guys, and I really don’t have hard feelings towards them. I’m disappointed not only in them but FOR them. I genuinely hope our paths cross again.
The Current Landscape
I’m not going to go into a super deep dive on all the different livestreaming options today. There are plenty and they loosely fall into three categories:
1) Social Media platforms that have livestreaming available with varying features and criteria such as Facebook / Meta, Twitter (which is still using the old Periscope interface), Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube etc…
2) Livestreaming cloud-based studios that allow you to multicast to other social platforms (but don’t have their own social element) such as Restream.io (which I use), BeLive, StreamYard, Switcher Studio etc. *Funny side note Ally and I shared a stage with Nick Mattingly the CEO & Co-Founder of Switcher Studio at Podcast Movement in Chicago a few years back - we got him involved in some of our shenanigans there which you can see in this throwback TikTok (I told him someone called him a nerd).
3) Livestreaming platforms that have a social element (but primarily exist for livestreaming) such as Twitch and Heckle. This category is the one we like for our morning show, but I use the other two categories for other purposes.
I just came across this article on the current top 23 platforms for livestreaming if you want a more exhaustive list and there is some great stuff in this article, but they missed one. A really important one. Our current home I already mentioned - Heckle!!!
Let’s HECKLE!
Heckle was designed by a former Periscoper with the Periscope community in mind and over the course of the last year he’s nailed it. It’s fun, the comments happen instantaneously, you can pump hearts on the screen with a slight twist and we’re loving it. Our Periscope friend in Australia “BrizWiz” Brett Walsh (who actually visited us here in Michigan with his lovely wife Kim) told us about it and to his credit he’s been a steadfast supporter and supporter of this platform even when I was initially skeptical. I’m glad he stayed on me. As of this writing it’s only available for iOS but Simon the developer is working on Droid and a desktop version at some point. Download the app and give us a follow at @FrameableFaces! Spread the word!
Heckle!!!
Thanks for reading - feel free to comment below and I’ll see you on Heckle!
M10 Social is owned by Doug Cohen in West Bloomfield, MI and provides social media training and digital marketing services from the Frameable Faces Photography studio Doug owns with his wife Ally. He can be reached there at tel:248-790-7317, by mobile at tel:248-346-4121 or via email at mailto:doug@frameablefaces.com. You can also connect with Doug on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram, and/or M10 Social on Twitter or Facebook.
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Tune in to the 📷Doug&Ally📷Morning Show T-F between 10AM & 11AM EST UTC-4 by following them on Heckle or Twitter at @frameablefaces!
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