This story was submitted as a guest contribution by Tracey Welson-Rossman, the CMO of Chariot Solutions and founder of TechGirlz, and Gloria Bell, the Chief Digital Strategist at Bell Digital Strategies and Advisory Board Member of TechGirlz. We used both apps at various times throughout the conference, but at the Day 2 Keynote, we did an actual side-by-side comparison of Periscope and Meerkat. The reason we wanted to try live streaming at the conference is a no brainer; this has the potential to be a great marketing tool. The ability to reach more people with good content is really exciting when you run a lot of events like we do. Here are the pros and cons of each with our “Bake-off” winner (and the reasons why) below. Meerkat Pros: Easy to set up an accountEasy to give the stream a name / titleAbility to tweet comments in the streamCan schedule a streamAbility to save broadcastCan target smaller, more direct audience because no auto link to Twitter Cons: Cannot zoom in or increase volumeNeed a built-in audience to gain viewersLack of direct connection to tweet the stream makes it harder to gain audienceHard to manage the chat and hold the phoneNeed a good cellular or Wi-fi connection to make it workHard to understand the metrics for viewership during the broadcast and postLack of documentation on how to use itReally need a tripod for a good recordingNo post-viewing metrics Periscope Pros: Setting up the account was easyAbility to save the broadcastConnecting to and broadcasting via Twitter was easyAbility to tweet comments and likes in the stream, but can’t easily add other Twitter names in the tweetEasy to “title” – just like a tweetDirect link to Twitter makes for a larger audience but also more possibility for spam comments Cons: Can’t switch between Twitter accountsCan only have one account associated with the appNeed a good cellular or Wi-fi connection to make it workHard to manage the chat and hold the phoneLack of documentation on how to use itFew metrics – post view metrics much easier to see on an iPadReally need a tripod for a good recording There are a lot of limitations with both apps and we are hopeful there are more features coming that will address the issues we outlined above. Both seem to be good, fairly easy-to-use tools for livestreaming, especially at events. For right now we give Periscope the edge due to its seamless integration with Twitter. This feature alone will make it an easier-to-use social marketing tool. It is a slight edge, though. Even with the limitations, we see these apps as a great tool for events and smaller conferences with small budgets. The video and audio quality will not be great, but these apps will allow for broader distribution of events. Check out our next experiment at Chariot Solutions’ talk on Angular JS on April 22nd. Image Credit: Splitshire
