At Coachella 2015, Periscope Dominates Meerkat With Live Video Stream Counts

For those who could not attend the Coachella musical festival, the two-weekend event was livestreamed on YouTube for the fifth year in a row. But now with Meerkat and Periscope, interested listeners at home also could watch live video created by festivalgoers, including backstage interviews and footage from exclusive parties, via smartphones.

In the ongoing battle for a growing user base, Periscope came out on top, garnering 1,848 mentions to Meerkat's 1,064, or about 49 percent more over the two weekends. On the first weekend, Periscope had 1,633 mentions, about 23 per hour, while Meerkat had 988 mentions, about 14 per hour, according to data from Zignal Labs, a software company that can track stories on social media, television and the Web in real time.

Use of both apps fell during the second weekend, but even so, Periscope far outshined Meerkat with 95 percent more mentions. Over the second weekend, Meerkat garned 76 mentions, an average of once per hour. Periscope had 215 mentions, or about three per hour.

Zignal Labs tabulated mentions of the companies' names on blogs and in print and the hashtags #Meerkat or #Periscope with #Coachella. Links to Periscope and Meerkat streams can be sent via Twitter. Media companies Billboard, Mashable and Engadget all used Meerkat during the event.

Drake was the most talked about artist when it came to live streaming, Zignal Labs reports. The top acts mentioned concurrently with live streaming were Drake at 82 mentions, Annie Mac at 71 mentions and AC/DC at 61 mentions.

Weekend one far outshined weekend two on all tracking counts made by Zignal Labs. The technology captured 390,812 mentions of Coachella artists on weekend one and 104,122 mentions on weekend two. The festival expanded to two weekends in 2012.