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Houseparty — Bringing empathy to online communication
Houseparty is a face-to-face social network.
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@bentossell hey ben! Was actually #2 overall yes 😄 we had some scaling issues we had to deal with before... this product justreached over million users in beta. All word of mouth...
Competitive spaces with no dominant player are actually good indication of a market need that people haven't figured out yet. However let me add that we do think differently about "group video chat" - where other products are utilities, this product "sneaks" as a utility, but built ground up to behave as synchronous social network. Example: Flickr/Picassa are places you could upload a photo and share it with friends, does it make them the same as Instagram?
We believe the the format of calling is outdated, and there's a lot to innovate around conversation over the internet- think about it, the user story of hangouts/skype/group calling didn't change in a long long time.
@benrbn getting to #2 by word of mouth in a space that has no dominant player is a VERY promising start, for sure!!
I don't doubt that some innovations will be welcomed to group chatting...my block (in my mind) is that after 3 or more people are in a group voice chat it gets hard for people to speak and for the conversation to actually flow. I wonder if you see this as a problem to be solved or perhaps our behaviour may change? I still think people will resort to shouting over each other haha.
Who know...maybe something wacky like speaking in turn will be introduced in some group chat apps... if I'm talking then the other X people cant at the same time.
Something interesting could be if each thing someone said was recorded and left floating in the app for 5-10seconds, let the user listen to it if they feel they missed what someone said.
This format is like what we do in a Whatsapp group, if a rapid-fire convo is happening I can always scroll to see if I missed what Dave said about the topic. Also, I'd know if Andrew just laughed or didnt really put a point across so I'll let that comment pass.
@bentossell I think your observation is on the mark. The problems that have yet to be solved for live group video chat are ones of control, organization, structure...and monetization. It's akin to watching a classroom of kindergarteners before the teacher has taught them to raise their hands.
@craigstanford @bentossell Interesting points based around chat. But does video have to revolve around speech only? It's called Houseparty after all...
💕, @benrbn. There have been a few articles about the app, notably @kurtwagner8's piece in Recode. Why keep it a secret for so many months? Looking back at Meerkat, would you have approached its launch differently?
@rrhoover there's something about "owning" the product that makes it a statement. We didn't feel it was ready, and the reason people wrote about it was mostly because it blew out of our hands on May hehe. But still we weren't ready to say, "this is ready" -frankly, I still believe the experience need way more work, but core foundations are here...
Congrats Ben! I recently began using Houseparty with my friends (we love it).
Where would this app stand if Apple introduced group Facetimes, and any reason to think they won't?
@andrewett hey Andrew! Thanks!See my answer to @bentossell about the difference between utility and utility with network effect 👉🏻
https://www.producthunt.com/tech...
Hello everyone! It’s been a while :)..
18 months ago, we introduced Meerkat. Six months later, we made the decision to change direction and focus on making live video a daily habit. We weren't seeing the engagement that we hoped to get over time and thought that maybe the format of broadcast (one-to-many) is too far away from the everyday user.
Today we’re happy to introduce our latest experiment. Houseparty is a synchronous social network and it just finished going through a successful beta period of six months.
On the surface it’s like a super fast and simple “group facetime”, while also becoming the foundation for an elaborate virtual space where people can hang with friends when they are physically apart.
Face-to-face conversations over the internet are way too formal right now. We wanted lightweight way for us to see our friends everyday, no setup required. In a funny way, this is always the experience we wanted to give our users on Meerkat.
I’ll be around to answer questions, ask me anything!
In an effort to give some insight into our process and our development, I wanted to include some of the guiding principles we’ve used to develop Houseparty.
Houseparty Manifesto:
* Rule #1: it’s a party
* Open up the app, and you’re with your friends — immediately
* You may have expectations of who you’ll see at the party — you may also be surprised
* The more people you know at the party, the more fun it is!
* No randos
* A house party is comfortable and casual
* You can show up — or leave — at any time
Product decisions:
* Users are always live (screen is live on open)
* Permissive; Friends can join friends-of-friends conversations
* Users know when friends are in the app
* We clear/update notification to always reflect who is currently in the house
@benrbn Congrats Ben!!! The app looks really really sweet. I can totally see this working well within a number of circles and groups that I see. i remember the days of oovoo. i think this has a lot more potential
@benrbn I had to listen to your vision for Meerkat very closely and quite often back in the day... (because I needed to know how to communicate it on the blog)
When explaining Meerkat you described the benefits of "Tweeting live video", but when explaining the vision, you mentioned things like:
• "Always live"
• "Spontaneous togetherness"
• "Everyone has a story to tell" (everyone should go live)
• Drop what you're doing when you get a notification
When you were toying with the idea for HouseParty, it was quite clear from the beginning that it reflected the original vision better than "Tweet live video" has. :)
@benrbn Welcome back, Meerkat 😃 I always liked you over Periscope 😉 This is a really cool concept, and I'm excited to try it. I love "no randos," but how do you guarantee that?
What a party this has been.
It's definitely been hard keeping my mouth shut for the past year... But it's awesome. Everything @benrbn said times 💯! This time has been some of the most rewarding, educational and stressful I expect to see for a while. Trust me when I say our analytics are pretttttttty sweet 😎🤓
Great product Ben. What's your strategy to create the social networks effect on this app ? Because your KPI shouldn't be N° of downloads but instead making sure people will have their friends on-board soon enough when they sign-up. Word of mouth is the game changer! How are you planning to play around that? Do you have any target for early evangelists?
@hicham_amine hey Hicham! Beautiful question. Yes getting you to X friends in the first 24 hours is our #1 KPI -- you can see how the invite flow wrk and how the activity list work, that these are tool to onboard and match user's constantly.
@benrbn Yes, checked it out, worked pretty well ! We actually started testing it in the office. Pretty funny ! Good product !
@benrbn @hicham_amine Why not allowing to invite Facebook friends then? For example, plenty of my friends are not in the same country as me, so sending them a text is a no-go.
@benrbn Congratulations on wrapping up the beta! We wrote about it on The Next Web back in June - anything new since then?
I downloaded this app a ways back on an "app research binge", great to see it here. I strongly believe the instant-social audience of yesterday (snapchat, livestream x) will transition into apps like this for quick, in the moment communication with who matters.
Teleparty was the first app I saw that did this format, though it was no where near as thought out and polished as Houseparty. I even made an app a while back in this format called Shindig! We all had parties on our mind, right?
Anyways, I have a really good feeling about this product. Congratulations all who created it!
@aidan Well according to the PH post for Teleparty, it was formally named Houseparty so from what I can see, Meerkat pivoted into a new app called Houseparty that's the exact same as a Teleparty which was formerly called Houseparty (and they aren't related I don't think). Doesn't that seem kinda suspicious...
Congrats on the launch, @benrbn and team! 🏠🎉
Been using Houseparty for the last few weeks and it's a lot of fun. Love the simplicity of opening the app and instantly being thrown into a group video chat with friends.
@benrbn Agree. I just thought a little bit of people discovery factor would make it more attractive... Right now it just feels like another IMO, FaceTime, Snapchat etc that I have to force my frienda to download. Awesome product btw! Love the product. Not bashing it .. Just giving constructive feedback.
@benrbn @khaliphj I've got a lot of friends on this so far, some were thinking that this was the point of the app. It might make sense to talk to strangers when its a group of you, when its one on one then yes it can be weird. It'd be something to experiment with. However I do like the friends of friends way of meeting people.
@benrbn Love the serendipity of the product. Who did you target for the beta community? What was their feedback? I've seen many high schoolers use facetime before & after class.
@nikitabier thank u Nikita! We do have many colleges and high schoolers in our community. One thing that surprised us all is how they actually use the product less when there's no-school and how the usages surges as the school year starts again.
@benrbn @nikitabier That's interesting insight. It makes sense too in a way because social platforms like Houseparty actually thrives when other traditional social interactions are taking place. There's no better place for that than at school. The piggyback effect is tremendous. Positive feedback loop.
Congrats Ben! Played with this while in beta and always had a great fun experience. Looking forward to seeing this in the wild!
I could see this being useful when you get a group of people from different locations together. On my own experience, the only time I do something similar is when I have a conference call for work or when I connect like once a week or month with my friends from high school or so. What is the actual intended use you guys had when coming up with the idea? Or is there something that others have discovered that it is beneficial to use for that I haven't yet? Thanks!
Flawless execution by @benrbn and the entire team. Congrats on an amazing launch - such a fun product!
Any plans to integrate with live streaming to share Houseparties with external audiences like Google Hangouts does with YouTube Live? This would be awesome.
Poor blab.im. Shut their service and declared they'd be doubling down on "building an ‘always on’ place where you go to hang with your friends." Looks like the Meerkat team pivoted to that faster with houseparty!
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