The application is rumored to have gathered an important sum of money from famous Hollywood investors

Mar 27, 2015 07:46 GMT  ·  By

After Twitter made the announcement that it would launch Periscope, its own live streaming service, Meerkat also released some interesting news.

The video-sharing app was revealed to have gathered no less than $14 million (€13 million) from well-known investors such as one of the oldest venture capital firms, Greylock Partners, but also celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher and Jared Leto.

If anyone was expecting Meerkat to go into a rapid downfall after the release of the news that Twitter would provide live streaming services for its users, they were proved wrong.

Meerkat rose to fame quite rapidly given that it was launched only about a month ago and to have raised such a large amount of money from donations is a big step which proves that the app is still going strong.

Despite the fact that Periscope is known to have more features than Meerkat and the advantage to being owned by Twitter, it would seem that the latter will not lose ground.

How Meerkat managed to gain so much attention

According to Recode, Periscope even brought something new to the broadcasting world. It apparently allows you to like the video as many times as you please by simply tapping on the screen, unlike Meerkat, which only allows you to like it once. It is unknown if this feature will determine users to switch to Periscope, although ever since its release on the market, Periscope was described as an improved version of Meerkat.

Given that Meerkat has garnered quite some popularity, it might be pretty hard for Periscope to dethrone it, despite the advantages that it offers. People might want to stick to the app that they have been using so far, irrespective of its minor flaws.

The fact that it was released on the market first has given Meerkat an obvious advantage, but the company might want to consider making some adjustments to it in terms of design and features if they want to keep their almost half a million users.

Another option available for Periscope users is the notification system, all your Twitter followers are bound to receive a notification when you start broadcasting. But due to multiple complaints from users who have too many followers willing to try out the new app, Periscope has taken to Twitter to let its users know that they have the option to disable the notifications if they find them inconvenient. All the users have to do is go to the People Section, then Profile and Settings.

Although the reports on the amount of money Meerkat has managed to raise from its investors have released different numbers, with some suggesting that it might be a sum of around $40 million (€37 million), the company has made no declarations on the mater.

Having gained a lot of support from celebrities, given that even James Fallon uses it, Meerkat might just beat the odds and keep its current position as the most used live-streaming app, despite Twitter’s efforts to replace it with Periscope.