Meerkat or Periscope? The Answer Is Obvious

The big tech discussion this week? Meerkat vs. Periscope. And I figured it was about time I weighed in on the discussion.

First off, full disclosure: VaynerRSE, my fund, invested in Meerkat. I also, full disclosure, missed the boat on investing in Periscope. Seriously. I tried to invest one year ago and missed it by a couple of days. In fact, here is the email I sent when I found out I had missed it:

Okay, so it was one year. Still. That hurts, because I would have made money on the exit with Twitter.

So obviously, I have good feelings towards both apps. I am, truthfully, a bit conflicted because when you break it down to the math, I have more upside with Meerkat. I also started out using Meerkat and am more comfortable with it.

But this opinion is an opinion. Take the disclosures for what you will.

I’m fascinated right now by all the articles coming out about Meerkat being dead, Periscope winning, Periscope losing, on and on and on. There are a lot of articles at the moment and it’s clear that many people are riding the wave of this discussion. No problem with that; both apps are extremely interesting products, and I’m impressed with both. I love the slickness of Periscope’s interface, and it obviously has the massive advantage of being integrated into Twitter. On the other side of things, Meerkat has enormous DNA in live streaming.

No doubt, it will be an interesting situation to watch.

I will say this: the only thing I truly want to comment on is that I think it is foolish for any pundits, gurus, or journalists to declare a winner thirteen seconds into it. Example: I remember everyone telling me that Posterous was going to destroy Tumblr because they were a Silicon Valley platform and Tumblr was New York. Or what about the early debates between Gowalla and Foursquare?

Maybe at this point you’re saying “Yes, but Periscope was just acquired by Twitter.” Well, to that I’ll respond with one word: Jaiku. It was a Twitter competitor, and Google bought it. VentureBeat even predicted it would shut Twitter down. Quite the opposite happened.

Stop trying to predict things.

I know one thing for sure: no matter where my personal vested interests are, the number one goal in my life is to always be right when I’m on the record. I do it for my brand over my investments. So my voice and my statement is this: it’s way too early to call this footrace. I would even argue that the biggest challenger is still on the sidelines: Snapchat. What if Snapchat offers live video tomorrow?

Even bigger idea: what if it’s just really hard to produce live video sustainably, and nobody wins?

Those two statements feel even better to me than saying Meerkat will win, or Periscope will win. But obviously, Meerkat winning, Periscope winning...it all feels nice to me.