This is a continuation of the previous History of Social Media blogs, and you can read Part I here and Part II here.
This one is rather less fun than the others, but does contain a useful bibliography at the end. Press on, I say, press on!
Recho: Recorded Echo. Launched in 2014, Recho is a SNS that allows users to build a limited profile, find connections, create lists, and search for others by their names, connections, or hashtags. Much like Bubbly, there have been voice-recording based SNS previously, but Recho stands out by geolocating the recordings. The tagline of the company is “Some stories belong to a place” and it states that “The site-specific dogma benefits the user experience as content automatically contextualizes itself with its surroundings. The possibility to leave digital sounds in physical places simply lets you relate to content in a new way” (Recho 2015). Users of the free service can record voice recordings of up to 30 seconds. The recording is tied to the physical location, within fifteen metres. Other users or friends must then go to the place where the Recho has been dropped to be able to hear it. Once a user listens to a Recho, it can be stored in the app for replaying later.
With easy integration into other SNS such as Facebook and Twitter, Recho has made use of larger sites to draw in users who may like to explore its features. Recho also offers four different account types which vary in price. For a fee the Plus account allows the user to place Rechos on a map using the site’s interface. These Rechos work much like the free version’s except that Plus users can record, edit, and export Rechos as mp3s that have a limitless duration. The Pro account, which has a significantly higher price, offers in-app branding, consultations, and all the bells and whistles. For companies and users who want a special service, they can choose the Enterprise package that gives users full rights to all content, custom user interface, and a custom App in the App store. Regardless of which version you choose, Recho offers users a new way to tell stories by tying them to a physical place, a feature that is sure to influence future SNS and the way users experience creative outlets.
If Recho is about geolocating sound, Space Tag (spacetag.me) is about geolocating written notes. The idea behind Space Tag is for users to sign up, connect with each other and to snap photos and leave notes in a location. These notes can then be shared on a user’s social network, shared with connections or just left hanging in the location for others to come across. To find the notes, a user can utlises the app, which takes advantage of the phone camera to scan a location and find virtual green dots which indicate that a note has been left. If that’s too much effort, users can use the map feature, to locate nearby notes and go there to see them. Though Space Tag has been listed as one of Forbes Top Fifteen Social Networks to Watch in 2015, it is still in beta mode and rather buggy. It currently promises to do for images and notes what Recho is doing for sound, but until it upgrades, it is in danger of being overtaken by similar geographically-based SNS and social networking apps (SNA) such as Traces, Skychalk, PopNotes from well-known brand Post-It, and Findery.
Findery was founded by Caterina Fake, who was a founder of Flickr. Run in beta since 2012 (then previously known as Pinwheel), Findery is the “Treasure map to your life” (Findery 2015) that allows users to sign up, create a profile, search for connections, follow other users and to create, leave, and find notes around the world. The site was launched quietly in order to avoid what Fake calls “’empty restaurant’ syndrome” (Cited in Taylor, C. 2014) and to ensure that there was plenty of content for when the site opened to the public. It is a strategy that seems to have worked. Findery works together with other SNS, such as Twitter and Facebook, to seamlessly integrate into a user’s life. Notes can include supported items from Instagram, YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, and Soundcloud. Currently, Findery is biding their time developing revenue streams, and it will be interesting to see how it is able to monetise its data and services and how that will change interaction with its user base.
The rise of geolocational, social networking apps shows no sign of slowing as we head into the future. In the early part of 2015, two social networking apps, Meerkat and Periscope launched to provide a way stream live videos from anywhere in the world. They work in slightly different ways. Meerkat is tied seamlessly into your Twitter account. You log into Meerkat, you type whatever you want in the text field and click ‘stream’. From there the text you entered will go out as a Tweet and whatever the camera on your phone is pointed at will be streamed live via Twitter. People can also respond to your live stream, which shows up in your Twitter feed as replies. These live feeds are truly live and ephemeral, and once the streaming has ended, the feed is no longer available. You can save the feed or photo to your phone, but these will be available only to you and not to your followers at large. Geek Wire author Mónica Guzmán summarised it the draw of Meerkat by saying, “Why take a picture or post 140 characters? If you want people to see the world through your eyes, just go ahead and let them” (2015).
After Meerkat launched and started to grow, its life force, Twitter, limited the company’s access to Twitter’s social graph. Twitter still allow Meerkat users to post to their Twitter feed, but it keeps the Meerkat app from automatically converting a user’s Twitter followers to the people they follow in the Meerkat app and it could limit the ‘live’ streaming. Though this might not kill Meerkat as a SNA, it will hinder its growth in the coming months.
One of the reasons that Twitter put the brakes on Meerkat is that they purchased newcomer SNA Periscope, which, essentially does the same thing as Meerkat. Launched in April of 2015, Periscope had one million users in its first ten days. It was live for less than two weeks before Twitter snapped it up. Their tagline of “Explore the world through someone else’s eyes” (Periscope 2015) is as close as the developers could get to teleportation, allowing users to stream live feeds from anywhere in the world. Unlike Meerkat, Periscope doesn’t automatically tweet your live stream. And, users have the option of saving streams and watching them again for a twenty-four hour period. Users can live stream from their phone and they and their viewers can comment live on the stream. In addition, users can follow others, get notifications, and build a community around topics, themes and other users.
With the new arrival of live-streaming SNA, it is only a matter of time before they are more fully integrated into everyone’s lives. Celebrities, Hollywood, and the music industry have all started to embrace live streaming apps as a way to build a stronger connection with their audiences. However, some people are fully against it, such as the National Hockey League, who recently banned the use of both Meerkat and Periscope.
In the coming months, there will be more people joining Meerkat and Periscope as they gain international popularity, and this will change the way that news corporations and publishers negotiate the digitally social environment. As Guzmán notes, “You don’t capture moments on Meerkat [or Periscope]. You free them. In that sense, other kinds of social media are middlemen” (2015). Middlemen or not, the rise of SNS and SNA will provide endless opportunities and trials for publishers. If they choose to ignore the influence of social media platforms, they run the very real risk of alienating their current audiences and ignoring an unfathomably large pool of potential writers and readers.
This will be added to as I go on in my research, so watch this space.
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