Did you pay to see the so-called 'fight of the century' between Floyd "Money" Mayweather and Manny "Pac-Man" Pacquaio? Tons of bars and other public spots paid a pretty penny to make the event available to their customers - and many say it paid off big time.
What caught my eye this morning was a piece on Mashable about a reporter who watched the fight on Periscope. Wow. She's right - good or bad, this could be the future.
In case you don't know, Periscope and Meerkat are two of the most interesting new social platforms making news right now. Periscope is Twitter's new live-streaming video app that allows you to watch and broadcast live video from anywhere - in real time. Periscope saves the video streams and anyone can view them for up to 24 hours. Meerkat streams live and the video disappears when the broadcast ends.
What's going to be key for media in the coming weeks and months is clear. Number 1 - know that these new tools are out there. Anyone can be recording and broadcasting you in real-time (pay attention political campaigns). Number 2 - Smart media companies and advertisers - especially mobile ad-tech - should be looking for ways to monitize this. This could be the silver bullet everyone's looking for in Twitter.
And a further shot over the bow in the cable / streaming wars... As Forbes points out: From the moment the broadcast began, streams from within the U.S. and around the globe gave non-paying audience members the chance to watch the "fight of the century" for free, and given the issues HBO has already had with the app and its ability to live-stream airings of Game of Thrones, one must wonder how much potential revenue was lost over the unexpected last-minute development.
This is one new power of real-time media development I'll be watching with great interest. Look for my upcoming Periscope's on the topic!
Beverly Macy is the CEO of Gravity Summit LLC, a strategic advisory firm located in Beverly Hills. She also teaches at UCLA Anderson School of Management and is the author of The Power of Real-Time Social Media Marketing.