Meerkat Hires New Exec To Hunt For Content Partnerships

 

Live streaming app Meerkat has only been available since March, but it has already brought in nearly two million subscribers and emerged as one of 2015’s hottest new apps. High-profile users like Jimmy Fallon and Madonna have aided Meerkat’s ascension, and with its latest hire, the company seems keen to continue its Hollywood invasion. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Meerkat has hired Sima Sistani, formerly of Tumblr, as its new VP of Media.

At Meerkat, Sistani will lead a team that will partner with content creators to create streams tailored to the platform. As she explains it, this will be “a whole new type of content. It’s important for us to build a media team early so that we can educate partners about it.”

Existing celebrity content on Meerkat gives us an idea of the type of premium offerings the app could target in the future. Fallon made a splash when he live streamed his Tonight Show

rehearsal on the app, while Madonna used it to debut a new music video. In its first week of activity, Meerkat touted dozens of high-profile users, who have helped it get a leg up (in terms of subscribers) over its chief competitor, the Twitter-owned Periscope.

Sistani comes from Yahoo-owned Tumblr, where she served as the blogging platform’s Director of Media. Before that, she founded a company called Rogue Paper.

Sistani will report to Meerkat CEO Ben Rubin. “On Meerkat, the social conversations are the content, and we can create awesome moments when the audience is part of the story,” Rubin told The Hollywood Reporter. “Sima will be great at that.”