Republican presidential hopefuls Rand Paul and Jeb Bush both made a point of taking their campaigns to the technological cutting edge this week when they used the iOS video-streaming app Meerkat to broadcast their appearances, Yahoo News reported.

Paul used the tool to stream live video of his interactions with exhibitors at South by Southwest, the set of festivals and conferences that take place early each year in Austin, Bloomberg noted. The Kentucky senator, who is expected to announce a presidential bid in early April, noted that his pre-campaign travels were taking him to hotspots of innovation.

"People keep asking me: 'Why are you in Texas and not in New Hampshire?'" he said. "Well, because I think if you want talent you've got to go to where the talent is."

Bush, meanwhile, went so far as to stream an entire speech on Meerkat, Yahoo News noted. The former Florida governor spoke on Thursday at a fundraiser at a private home in suburban Atlanta and broadcast his remarks through the app, inviting his 170,000 Twitter followers to watch.

The brother of former President George W. Bush has yet to formally announce his presidential run but used his address to make a pledge for his "hypothetical" campaign.

"I'm going to try to stay positive," Bush promised. "I'm going to be a happy warrior, not a grumpy one."

No matter who will capture the nomination and the White House in the end, Meerkat and similar apps are likely to be game changers along the way, Real Clear Politics judged.

"Welcome to the ultra-modern political campaign, where everything candidates (and potential ones) do and say can be disseminated -- without a media filter -- even faster than it takes to write or read a tweet or a Facebook post," the political publication announced.

While live streaming in itself is not new, it is now more accessible than ever for the average user, Real Clear Politics summarized.

"If 2004 was about Meetup, 2008 was about Facebook, and 2012 was about Twitter, 2016 is going to be about Meerkat (or something just like it)," Medium concurred.