Comments on post “Houseparty”
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
I've seen this circling around for the last 5 months or so... I think it hit top of the app store in social networks at some point? So why the launch now :)
This space seems to be more and more competitive with people doing slight variations on 'live video with friends' - as you can see in the related products. I wonder why this space is so competitive and why no one app has yet dominated this space?
Also, what is the strategy to get users on the app... If I open it up, and none of my friends on it then I just leave? It obviously becomes more valuable as more users join and use the app.
I do like the party-feel to it that when you turn up you dont know who else is there! Quite an interesting twist :)
Adding this on to my comment:
I dont know that group live chats work beyond 3 people. Blab did it with 4 and I feel like there is always at least one person sat in silence. With multiple friends in a live feed, you can't easily get a word in or have a proper conversation. It works on text groups because the text doesnt need to be consumed in that second...its still there if others add to the convo after you send it. Voice is much more difficult and very in the moment.
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Ben Rubin
@benrbn · Co-founder, Life On Air Inc
@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We believe the the format of calling is outdated, and there's a lot to innovate around conversation over the internet- think about it, the user story of hangouts/skype/group calling didn't change in a long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.
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Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
@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.
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Craig Stanford
@craigstanford · Co-Founder & VP of BizDev @ StageHound
@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.
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B Dowding Young
@bradleyisyoung · Head of mobile OMG - Hunting HK apps
@craigstanford @bentossell Interesting points based around chat. But does video have to revolve around speech only? It's called Houseparty after all...
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