Meerkat is dying – and it’s taking U.S. tech journalism with it
The ugly truth that U.S. tech media has declined to mention even in passing is that Meerkat had never been a hit to begin with. All those breathless media reports about “the hot new app” and “the break-out app” were deeply misleading at best — and cynical legerdemain at worst.
Here’s another article from yesterday that stuck with me. There’s a bunch of services that’s been hyped over the years in addition to Meerkat, eg. Google+, Path, Color and Yo. Bloggers and pundits are quick to embrace them and explain their success factors and geniality, most recent Benedict Evans did so in hist latest post on the opportunities in messaging [emphasis mine]:
New pieces of psychology – new behaviors or attitudes that an app can enable or ride on. Sitting on that underlying social platform, an app that finds one of these can go viral. Examples include Instagram, Snapchat, Yo, Yik Yak, Secret or Meerkat.
While I truly respect Benedict Evans and appreciate every one of his posts, I think he’s wrong to put some of these services forward as “examples to follow” (still, he is not explicitly saying that these are succesful companies ).
I do not think that the media should refrain from covering trending apps, but rather there should be a better distinction between interesting concepts and successful companies. It takes time to build a good company, and at the core it has to be a lot more than hype (read: product, product, product).