Why Meerkat and Periscope Are the Biggest Things Since, Well, Twitter by Ryan Holmes.
From the post:
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Finally, there are the global and political implications. If every single person on earth with a phone is able to broadcast anything in real time, we’re going to see a democratization of sharing information in ways we’ve never seen before. Take for example the crucial role that Twitter played in the Egyptian revolution of 2011. In many cases, social media became a new type of lifeline for people on the ground to share accounts of what was happening with the world. Now, imagine a similar world event in which live updates from citizens are in real-time video. These types of updates will transport viewers to events and places in ways we have never seen before.
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Live video streaming is valuable for some use cases but the thought of “…every single person on earth is able to broadcast anything in real time…” fills me with despair.
Seriously. Think about the bandwidth you lose from your real time circumstances to watch a partial view of someone else’s real time circumstance.
Every displaced person in every conflict around the world could broadcast a live feed of their plight, but how many of those can you fit into a day? (Assume you aren’t being tube fed and have some real time interaction in your own environment.)
Live video is imagining of a social context, a context that isn’t possible to display as part of a real time video. Every real time video feed has such a context, which require even more effort to acquire separate from the video feed.
As an example, take the “…the crucial role that Twitter played…” claim from the quote. Really? According to some accounts, The myth of the ‘social media revolution’, It’s Time to Debunk the Many Myths of the Egyptian Revolution, work on the issues and organization that resulted in the Arab Spring had been building for a decade, something the Twitter-centric pass over in silence.
Moreover, as of September 2011, Egypt had only 129,711 Twitter users, so as of the Arab Spring, it was even lower. Not to mention that the poor who provided the backbone of the revolution did not have Western style phones with Twitter accounts.
A tweeted revolution is one viewed through a 140 character lens with no social context.
Now imagine real time imagery of “riots by hooligans” or “revolts by the oppressed” or “historical reenactments.” Despite it high bandwidth, real time video can’t reliably provide you with the context necessary to distinguish any of those cases from the others. No doubt real time video can advocate for one case or the other, but that isn’t the same as giving you the facts necessary to reach your own conclusions.
Real time video is a market opportunity for editorial/summary services that mine live video and provide a synopsis of its content. Five thousand live video accounts about displaced persons suffering from cold temperatures and lack of food isn’t actionable. Knowing what is required and where to deliver it is.