It would almost be a sin for Snapchat not to embrace live streaming

Snapchat isn’t developing a live video feature yet, but it should. “We’re watching and learning,” 24-year-old Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel acknowledged onstage Tuesday evening at the annual Code conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. My advice to Snapchat? Dive in, head-first. Live streaming, the kind popularized by apps like Meerkat and Periscope, isn’t just booming right now, it’s the future, one where everyone hops from stream to stream until they settle on one they like. This much we know, based on early adopters-turned evangelists: actors, musicians, politicians and many more folks who use the apps to broadcast raw video, capturing moments ranging from Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail to T-Mobile CEO John Legere on a 5-mile lunchtime run. But equally as important: live video jibes really well with Snapchat’s core ephemeral messaging product more so than the startup’s recent forays live video jibes really well with Snapchat’s core ephemeral messaging product more so than the startup’s recent forays into peer-to-peer payments with Snapcash and content publishing with Snapchat Discover. The app already has a video feature called live stories that lets Snapchat users at the same event — a concert, a sports game — add snaps to the same story for others to view. The basic distribution model is there, too. Snapchat was set up from the get-go as a social network not unlike Periscope and Meerkat, where one user can share content to many followers. (Longer length video broadcasts could pop up in Snapchat’s existing “Live” area, for example.) Sure, Snapchat’s shared content is somewhat different from Periscope’s and Meerkat — stills and short clips, for now — but the underlying principles are the same.