Though it was still in beta stage, blab was a good product. It seemed the future was bright but according to the CEO, Shaan Puri, “Blab was great in many ways, but it wasn’t going to be an everyday thing for millions.”
Blab was a livestreaming app that competed with Twitter’s Periscope, Facebook Live, IBM-owned UStream.tv and other media companies in the livestreaming game. Here was a product that garnered 3.9million users in one year.
Innovation Village was one of its users – we used it in a chat session with Benjamin Benaim, one of the co-founders of Seedstars. The experience was satisfactory but there were some kinks. We thought that all these kinks would be sorted before the anticipated full launch. But this will never be.
Blab was created at Monkey Inferno, a tech incubator self-funded by the founders of Bebo, Michael and Xochi Birch.
Shaan Puri enumerated the issues with the app in a recent post published last weekend. For instance, he said that “Of the 3.9 million total users, only 10% (~400,000) came back on a regular basis.” The reason he gave was that “most live streams aren’t interesting enough to justify stopping what they are doing to watch your broadcast.” He also said that “the majority of usage came from everyday people “just hanging out”. They weren’t making content, they were making friends.”
Though it is shutting down, Shaan says “Our team is already working furiously on the next evolution of Blab.” He adds that the team is building an ‘always on’ place where people can go to hang with your friends. Essentially the team is taking what worked and and doubling down on it.
He finalised by saying the new product would be communicated as and when ready.
