Meerkat for iOS now lets you publish livestreams to Facebook and links to your phone contacts

Meerkat is introducing a bunch of new features in its latest update for iOS including the ability to publish livestreams to Facebook.

Starting today, Meerkat will let you post upcoming and currently airing livestreams to Facebook. The latest Meerkat version will also allow users to link to their phone contacts as a way to find new livestreams on the app.

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Meerkat is also introducing two new features today. “Mobbing” is a new status ranking that will push your livestream to the app’s main feed if it meets certain criteria. Users will also now be able to turn their avatars into emojis as a way to react to a livestream in progress.

The update is significant, because it means you no longer have to have a Twitter account to use Meerkat. It also means Meerkat is no longer dependent on Twitter to attract an audience.

Before today’s update, Meerkat relied solely on Twitter to push its livestreams to a user’s network. Now, with the Facebook integration, Meerkat livestreams will be able to reach more people on multiple networks. Also, giving users the option to link their phone contacts to Meerkat will improve discoverability on the app. The ability to find new feeds was hampered when Twitter cut Meerkat’s access to its social graph.

Twitter and Meerkat have been at odds since Twitter launched a competing livestreaming service called Periscope. While Meerkat seemed popular upon its launch, Periscope’s success has largely eclipsed it.

With this latest update, Meerkat is poised to better compete with the app and, dare I say, make a comeback.