Twitter‘s Periscope is winning the social live-streaming race by a wide margin, if new data from Adobe Systems can be believed: Adobe’s Digital Index advertising report shows that Periscope live streams are getting a lot more mention on social networks than Meerkat streams.
Periscope took the lead in earnest during the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight in May, when mentions of both social live streaming apps tripled. But while Periscope apparently could capitalize on the event — and the surrounding piracy controversy — it looks like Meerkat traffic has leveled off since.
“I call it a knockout in the first round,” said Adobe Digital Index principal analyst Tamara Gaffney.
What’s more, Periscope is still growing. Mentions of Periscope live streams on Twitter have doubled since the service launched its Android app in May. Still, Gaffney cautioned that Twitter shouldn’t celebrate just yet, since social live streaming is still an unproven medium with no clear business model attached to it. “It will take a while to be worth anything to markets,” she said.
Adobe gathered its insights into Periscope’s and Meerkat’s popularity by analyzing mentions of live broadcasts from both services on Twitter, and in Meerkat’s case on Facebook as well. That’s an imperfect indicator, as Meerkat’s makers could possibly argue that they have bigger audiences for each stream. The service just introduced embeds to add Meerkat streams to any website, and did a deal with the Discovery Channel to power its live streaming during Shark Week.
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Still, Periscope’s growing social presence should have Meerkat worried, especially since the whole idea of social live streaming is to use social networks to get the word out about live broadcasts — and at least right now, it looks like Periscope is just better at that.