Meerkat CEO: We will build our own social network

Meerkat CEO Ben Rubin sat down with Yahoo Tech’s David Pogue during South by Southwest in a Yahoo TechMix interview and came across as magnanimous and unworried, writes Yahoo Tech’s Rafe Needleman. The live video streaming service was coming to grips with its new relationship with Twitter, which made public an acquisition of a rival service and imposed its “internal policy” to not let third parties, like Meerkat, use its data competitively. On this point Rubin did jab at Twitter, pointing out that “internal policy” is doublespeak. Policies for platform companies should be open, he said.

We knew Twitter would be upset at some point … We didn’t know they were buying a company in this space.

Meerkat CEO Ben Rubin

So how will Meerkat move forward, without Twitter’s full blessing? Rubin said that Meerkat will start to build its own social graph mechanics. A diplomat on the interview stage, Rubin remained sanguine through the discussion, Needleman concludes.

We need to acknowledge the fact that we would not be sitting here were it not for Twitter. Maybe the fact that they escalated our decision making might be something very good for us.

Ben Rubin

Technology meerkat