Live streaming app Meerkat has been generating buzz ever since its well received debut at SXSW Interactive 2015, and now the company behind it is hiring media experts to spearhead an initiative to make some high profile partnerships with Hollywood.

Sima Sistani, former head of media and partnerships for Tumblr, has joined Meerkat as its new VP of media and will be building out a new media team from the small company’s San Francisco headquarters. Sistani plans on adding up to 10 new people, which would nearly double Meerkat’s workforce.

“I’m looking forward to working proactively with media partners who want to push the envelope when it comes to live content — this is about participatory media,” Sistani told Re/code. While Meerkat will be looking for valuable partners to drive its platform, Sistani is more concerned with content quality than stardom. She said: “I don’t think we’ve seen the best use cases from the medium yet. It’s less about celebrity and more about content.”

Sistani will report directly to Meerkat’s CEO, Ben Rubin, who said that Meerkat will be working on “a whole new type of content. It’s important for us to build a media team early so that we can educate partners about it.”

Rubin added: “On Meerkat, the social conversations are the content, and we can create awesome moments when the audience is part of the story. Sima will be great at that.”

Chloe Sladden, Twitter Inc’s former head of media, has also joined Meerkat as an advisor and will provide advice for the company’s media partnership plans.

Meerkat initially took advantage of Twitter’s social graph API to connect directly with users’ followers, but its access was cut off when Twitter decided to join the live stream market by acquiring Periscope. While Meerkat hit the market running and quickly gained over 2 million users, Periscope managed to pull in over 1 million users in just 10 days.

For now, Meerkat still holds the larger market share and name recognition, but Periscope is its most significant competition and benefits from Twitter’s resources and existing partnerships. Forging valuable media partnerships is necessary to to strengthen Meerkat’s position.

photo credit: via photopin (license)