I have already told you all about Meerkat, and in doing so I mentioned Periscope. At the time Periscope had not been released yet. Now it has been, so we are going to look at how the live stream world has changed since that happened.

Many people were very impressed by Meerkat when it launched, it grew in popularity quickly and had a “cool new thing” feel to it. Shortly after launching Meerkat was cut from the Twitter fire hose and Periscope had all access. There was worry then that, the recently acquired by Twitter, Periscope might over throw it quickly. In most regards this seems to be true, I have watched my Meerkat notifications dwindle as Periscope was launched and spread. Meerkat has now launched on Android too, but so far I haven’t noticed it help a lot.

These two apps are essentially doing the same thing; sharing live video at a moments notice. The biggest difference is that after you shoot video with Periscope you can allow your followers to view the footage for up to 24 hours. With Meerkat you have to be there when the stream is taking place. Periscope seems to be getting the big name support that I have to believe is being leveraged from being owned by Twitter. When the biggest boxing match of the year was taking place, HBO was using Periscope to give a behind the scenes look in the locker rooms. This type of big name exposure is going to go a long way in the battle with Meerkat. It seems destined that Periscope will win this war but you never know when they might reveal the next killer feature. This is a market to keep on eye on for sure.

You can get Periscope on iOS here.