• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, April 16, 2015

Despite their catchy names and early hype, most consumers couldn’t name a single live-video app. Yet, among early adopters, Periscope appears to be taking an early lead on arch-rival Meerkat.

Since late March, Periscope has left Meerkat in the dust, according to new findings from analytics firm Socialbakers.

At last count, in fact, Periscope was experiencing more than 10 times the activity of Meerkat, based on tweets analyzed from Socialbakers’ sample of 25,000 brand, celebrity, entertainment, and media company profiles.

Periscope owes its success to Twitter, which recently acquired the app. Indeed, Periscope began establishing its lead immediately after Twitter relaunched the app on March 26.

"We’re seeing that a lot of the content creators that were posting Meerkat live streams switched to Periscope once it was launched,” said Phillip Ross, social media analyst at Socialbakers.

Prior to Periscope’s relaunch, Twitter began cutting off Meerkat’s access to its social graph. “As an independent network, Meerkat has not thrived,” according to Ross. Determined to dominate the live video market, Twitter is reportedly pressuring celebrities and top publishers to use Periscope in place of rival Meerkat.

Despite Twitter’s aggressive efforts, “It’s too early to say for certain whether Periscope has won out, or whether buzz around live streaming apps will continue to build,” said Ross. “What we do know is that social video seems to be a lasting trend in the social world.”

Marketers agree that Periscope and rival streaming services present some interesting opportunities.

“While we’re currently seeing low quality test-and-learn content flooding our newsfeeds, we’ll begin to see better live branded experiences as brand strategists and creatives experiment with Periscope and explore its possibilities,” Matt Wurst, vice president/GM of social media at 360i, recently told Social Media & Marketing Daily.

Long a growth engine for digital advertising, video has become increasingly key to the fortunes of social giants like Facebook and Twitter. Indeed, video will drive Twitter’s advertising business in 2015, according to a recent report from the equity research team at J.P. Morgan.

In 2015, “Twitter … will likely become an increasingly important form of engagement for brands given the ability to communicate with consumers in real-time and now to utilize video more effectively on the platform,” the team at J.P. Morgan predicted.

While estimating that a more modest $7.7 billion will go to digital video, this year, eMarketer suggested that 2015 is shaping up to be the year that social and video truly converge.