Remember Meerkat? It came out of nowhere in early 2015 — a star of SXSW, in particular — and was on everyone’s tongue for weeks. Then came Periscope, a strikingly similar competitor built mostly in stealth mode, and word that Twitter had acquired it for nearly $100 million dollars before much of the world even knew it existed.
Suddenly, interest in Meerkat fizzled.
A year and a half later, Meerkat is dead — officially.
Ben Rubin, founder of Life On Air (the company behind Meerkat), announced this afternoon that Meerkat has been pulled from the App Store:
The company itself, however, carries on: they’re now focusing on Houseparty, a group video chat application they’ve been building in secrecy for months.
Meanwhile, Meerkat’s own Twitter account has been shuttered and pushed into private mode. Its website now forwards to Houseparty’s website, instead.
