The interesting problem with Periscope and Meerkat

[Commentary] Periscope and Meerkat are mobile livestreaming apps. Lots of tech people are talking about these apps, and using them feels like exploring a new frontier. Livestreaming isn’t new, but broadcasting video from a smartphone to your Twitter feed is, and maybe that experiences will capture lots of people’s attention and become huge. (Or not.) Stranger things have happened. But while running a test on Periscope and Meerkat’s data consumption, I discovered a different, but significant, problem that may hamper these apps’ growth: namely, the difficulty of keeping up with a flood of real-time comments. My point is this: The one-to-many broadcast model on the livestreaming apps works fine. But the one-to-many communication model just does not scale. I’m sure anyone who broadcasts a lot would get much better at dealing with the inputs and outputs, but I think there are real limits to how good anyone can get at this kind of task.