Meerkat may finally be dead, but Houseparty continues legacy

Life On Air’s Meerkat, arguably one of 2015’s most exciting apps, has been pronounced dead.

As of 30 September 2016, Meerkat is no longer listed on Android’s Google Play store, or Apple’s iOS App Store.

The app, which took SXSW 2015 by storm and became a practical overnight sensation, allowed users to almost seamlessly livestream their activities. It was a novel idea at the time, but an idea that was soon made more mainstream courtesy of Twitter’s Periscope.

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According to a TechCrunch report, Meerkat’s founding company Life On Air, decided to pull the plug well before Periscope had an influence.

Meerkat, after launching mid-2015, has finally been removed from the world’s major app stores

“We may have just pulled Meerkat from the app store, but it was actually six months after we launched that we made the decision to change direction,” Life On Air’s co-founder Ben Rubin explains.

“The category of broadcast (one-to-many) wasn’t breaking as a daily habit…it’s too far away from the everyday user.”

With that said, the company has since shifted focus to its new app — Houseparty.

Adopting an always-online model, Houseparty is effectively a group video chat app, which allows up to eight friends to see other friends online in near real-time.

The app launched on 28 September 2016, and has since garnered over one million downloads on Android and iOS.

So while Meerkat is no longer an active part of the smartphone world, clearly its legacy lives on.