Last month, US-based live-streaming apps Meerkat and Periscope ignited a frenzy in the western tech media. The darling app at this year’s SXSW Interactive, Meerkat had its wings clipped when its Twitter integration was suspended. Then, out of nowhere, Twitter launched rival service Periscope. The latter service had been hiding in stealth, acquired by Twitter back in January. Not to go down without a fight, Meerkat announced a US$14 million funding round just hours after Periscope made its public debut. Still, the Silicon Valley media machine largely crowned Periscope the winner.
Across the globe, Tokyo-based startup Moi Corporation was watching the headlines with a combination of disappointment and excitement. Moi’s own live-streaming app, Twitcasting, has offered a similar experience since 2010. Even more, Twitcasting’s global user community just broke 10 million this week.
“It was surprising that Silicon Valley journalists were talking about these two new apps without mentioning services in Asia,” Yuki Ishikawa, Twitcasting’s global operations manager, tells Tech in Asia. “Similar for US teens and Snapchat, Twitcasting has become a major part of the lives of a lot of Japanese users.”
While the startup won’t reveal its exact number of monthly active users, Ishikawa explains that it’s over 50 percent of its total registration count – more than 5 million.
“The reason we don’t say the exact number is that it’s so complex,” he explains. “We have iOS and Android apps and a PC version, as well as login users and non-login users. We made the app so that people could use it without having to log in, so some users use it this way. We don’t count those users toward the 10 million [registered users], but we include them as active users.”
Even with seemingly nonstop coverage of Meerkat and Periscope, the services aren’t particularly popular beyond the Silicon Valley set. While it’s too early to discern total downloads or a monthly active user count, Meerkat never broke the top 100 chart for iOS in the US. The Daily Dot also estimates that the apps had only 20,000 active users each on the day of Periscope’s launch, and Business Insider pegs Meerkat’s user base at half a million. This is all without even touching on retention, something that Twitcasting has succeeded at.
People shouldn't be asking whether Periscope is killing Meerkat but whether either has figured out retention pic.twitter.com/RrALjmdJAO
— Justin Kan (@justinkan) April 6, 2015
Big in Japan (and Brazil)
Twitcasting has already become a platform in its own right, where communities congregate and stars break out.
When former AKB48 idol Tomomi Itano went solo, she streamed promotional videos for a new single on both YouTube and Twitcasting. According to Ishikawa, about 4,000 people watched her 37-minute YouTube stream. 22,000 tuned in for her six-minute Twitcasting broadcast. Maco, a popular Japanese singer who covers western artists, asked her Twitcasting followers to support her new album after it was released. It hit number one on the Japan iTunes charts that day. Pop culture icon Kyary Pamyu Pamyu is also a user, and the service has even been featured in a film and a hit manga.
Even Japanese politicians have gotten on board. In last year’s National Diet elections, five parties used Twitcasting to reach voters. Ishikawa said that a stream by one candidate had over 170,000 viewers. A different candidate in the race for Tokyo governor attracted nearly half a million viewers.
Twitcasting’s official Twitter account (@twitcasting_jp) is the third-most followed account for Japanese-language web services and apps, with 1.2 million followers. Only smash-hit mobile game Puzzle & Dragons and Twitter Japan have more followers, with 1.7 and 1.5 million respectively. It’s in the top 100 overall. By comparison, Meerkat has 320,000 followers and Periscope has 65,700. Of course they’re much newer, but they’ve had more global media coverage in a couple of weeks than Twitcasting in five years.
Celebrities in Brazil, Twitcasting’s second-largest market with about 10 percent of total users, have also embraced the platform. Grammy Award-winning singer Ivete Sangalo is the country’s most popular user, with several cast members of the reality TV show Big Brother Brazil also regularly Twitcasting. Two YouTube stars, Kefera and anti-censorship group Midia Ninja, also regularly use the app.
“We have low bandwidth, a big reason for our success in Brazil and other places with slow connections, and we have very low latency,” Ishikawa says. “Meerkat and Periscope aren’t as fast as our app.”
On top of speed, Ishikawa attributes Twitcasting’s traction in multiple markets to localization and user experience. The service is available in Japanese, English, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. It also offers some extra functions.
In addition to live-streaming video, Twitcasting features an audio-only radio mode. It might sound crazy, but this is a big deal for some privacy-obsessed Japanese users.
“There’s a trend in Japan where people like to imitate character voices from anime, comedians, or famous singers,” Ishikawa says. “The radio mode is a big community within a community.”
Twitcasting also offers a collaboration mode that allows up to four users to simultaneously stream together. Though it’s limited to four members in the current release, Ishikawa says that the startup tested it with 100 concurrent broadcasters last April.
While Meerkat and Periscope remain iOS-only, Twitcasting is available on iOS and Android. There’s even a PC version, though more than 94 percent of users opt for the mobile apps.
US push
With 80 percent of Twitcasting’s 10 million users in Japan, it’s no surprise that the startup has been overlooked by the western media. Ishikawa hopes to change that by making a more concerted push into the US. The company is preparing to open a US office and has already hired three employees, who currently work out of RocketSpace in San Francisco. An upcoming redesign to simplify the existing UI, scheduled to go live next month, is being led by the team’s new American designer.
Until now, all of Twitcasting’s growth has been organic, but the startup may launch a marketing campaign for the tough-to-crack US market. Ishikawa says that his team hopes to raise series B funding by the end of the year, which could become instrumental for US expansion and marketing. Last June, Twitcasting landed US$5 million in series A funding from Sinar Mas and East Ventures (Disclosure: East Ventures also invests in Tech in Asia. Please see our Statement of Ethics for more information).
“We already have strong user communities in Japan and Brazil, so we need to make one in the US,” Ishikawa says. “We actually don’t think Meerkat is a rival because it’s just a broadcasting tool. Periscope is huge, because of Twitter, but it also looks like a tool for broadcasting without a community.”
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