Comments on post “Houseparty”
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Ben Rubin
@benrbn · Co-founder, Life On Air Inc
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
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Sydney Liu
@sydney_liu_sl · Co-Founder of Commaful
@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
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Niv Dror
@nivo0o0 · Writer/Social Editor @ProductHunt
@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. :)
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Ben Rubin
@benrbn · Co-founder, Life On Air Inc
@sydney_liu_sl thanks you Sydney!
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Ben Rubin
@benrbn · Co-founder, Life On Air Inc
@nivo0o0 🍑❤️❤️
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Rhai
@rhaivimies · Pulling the future forward @Sounds_app 🚀
@benrbn congrats 🙌
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Evelynn Mimi Jae
@im_mimijae · Project hunter for Gadget Flow
@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?
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Paul Kemp
@paul_s_kemp · The App Guy Podcast
@benrbn Congratulations on the launch of the app Houseparty. It seems like a wildly fun app. You're welcome to talk about your journey on my podcast anytime. DM me on Twitter to grab a 20 min slot. As it happens, my last guest had 1/2 million beta testers (from word of mouth), so you've beat him by 1/2 million (ha!). Any plans to open this out to more than just friends? For example, being able to jump into a themed open Houseparty. Say a Product Hunt Houseparty?
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David Feng
@davidsfeng · Co-Founder at Reamaze
@benrbn @jsneedles I absolutely love the simplicity and subtleties of the landing page! Congrats!
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Björn Bakker
@bjorn_bakker · Co-founder & CEO @Blindfeed
@benrbn so incredible simple, yet so incredible powerful. I would love to connect this to a platform we're working on.
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Melissa Monte
@melissamonteee · Director of Media & Startup Growth
@paul_s_kemp Hey Paul, how would we go about getting an app on your podcast? I can give you more info, but we are currently a part of the Plug and Play FinTech Accelerator for our app Lenny.
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