Hashtag automatically uploads users’ Meerkat posts to YouTube

Meerkat users can now add #Katch to their Twitter posts and the service will automatically record their livestreams and post them on YouTube.

One of the major successes of this month’s SXSW festival was Meerkat — a live streaming app which enables users to create and broadcast video footage in the moment. Videos are shared with the world, live, via the user’s own Twitter account, before disappearing forever into the ether of internet-past. That was until hacker Tarikh Korula launched #Katch, a simple hashtag which enables Meerkat users to auto upload their livestreams to YouTube, immortalizing them forever.

Meerkat created some problems for itself by piggybacking onto Twitter’s infrastructure. The social media giant temporarily disabled Meerkat’s ability to tweet on people’s behalf, but it has since been restored and has now raised a reported USD 12 million in investments. Katch isn’t likely to encounter any such troubles since Meerkat founder Ben Rubin has given the ‘Meerkat record button’ his full support and blessing to make use of Meerkat’s 300,000 users.

To use #Katch, Meerkat users simply add the hashtag to their video description tweet. This lets the service know that the creator wants their live stream recorded. Katch will upload it to YouTube and tweet back a link to the video. Meerkat does offer users the option to save their video post-stream but #Katch makes the process temptingly simple. Are there other add-ons or services which could immortalize the immediacy of social network behaviour?