Spontaneous Togetherness: The Magic Dust That Made HOUSEPARTY a Huge Hit

With the sudden outburst of COVID-19, while most companies tanked, a few became viral and shot to fame. As a Product Manager, whenever I see yet another product in the market facilitating a service / use case that already is being fulfilled, I feel this unquenchable thirst to find out why it is doing well.

I had a very similar feeling about HOUSEPARTY. It was one fine day during the current quarantine when I was browsing through my Instagram, only to find out several hundred 8 tiled screenshots— each with a face in it (refer my drawing on the left). At first, to me, it looked like people are just excited to share that they’ve been using the free time in quarantine to connect with big groups. When I saw a few more, I couldn’t help but notice the hashtag “#houseparty”. No prizes for guessing but I started developing the itch to find out what’s so great about this Facetime / Group Whatsapp call look-alike application. 

To be frank, in my preliminary reading about it, nothing seemed to catch my surprise or amaze me. Still not satisfied, I decided to dig deeper and that led me to the founder of the app Ben Rubin. This was the turning point of my research. On reading more about Ben and his previous ventures, it started becoming clear to me that he saw a HUGE opportunity and that was not just enabling people to do a group video call. So, what was it?

Here’s what I found out. Ben did not bet all his money and a large part of his career to build a group video call/ broadcasting application in Fall of 2016. Any guesses on what the other industry leaders were doing in this space until 2016? Take a look: 

LAUNCH DATES OF A FEW OTHER INDUSTRY-LEADING LIVE FEATURES:

Snapchat -> July 2011
Twitter’s Periscope -> March 2015
Facebook Live -> April 2016
Instagram Insta Stories ->April 2016
Instagram Live ->2016

So, what was it that Ben saw? Take a look below. 

Most social media networks according to him provide asynchronous connectivity in forms of Likes or Comments that are all post-facto. He realized that humans still have an unmet need — something that replicates being together in real-time. Notice how the feeling of instant connection increases as we move from asynchronous to synchronous connectivity. 

While it may look like that Ben took his first shot on the LIVE broadcasting market in 2016, he had already launched an app called “Meerkat” in 2015 which was designed to facilitate 1:Many LIVE public broadcasting. Even though that was eventually sunsetted in late 2016, the key insight that Ben got along with his partner Sima Sistani for Houseparty was:

a) Humans crave connecting synchronously.
b) In Ben’s words “Being LIVE is taxing”, so he tried to figure how to make it feel like less work and more spontaneous. 
c) Since 1:Many/ Public broadcasting is only for special events, he wanted to discover a more regular use case.

And thus, Houseparty was born. 

“The fastest way to get a group video chat going” — Ben Rubin

Here’s what they did:

a) Being LIVE allows people to connect synchronously or in real-time.
b) Not having to invite anyone for a group call or fixing times in advance and just hopping on to an app to connect with someone who’s online is SPONTANEOUS. 
c) Private broadcasting is more for connecting with your friends, loved ones, acquaintances frequently and thus has a regular use case.

For all of those of you who don’t know — you can just open the app and you get to see who all are online. You can be in a “houseparty” with anyone you see online. You can also lock a party and limit any new people from joining the party. If you think about it — it is an experience simulating a real-life party. Here’s how: When you go to a houseparty, you go with an open mind to not just hang with your besties but also with other acquaintances present there. In your mind, you have freed that time to connect with people. Houseparty plays on just that — you may find a bunch of people from your college assignment group who you may not have reached out to otherwise however seeing them all online and talking to each other may make you want to “join the party”. 

It doesn’t stop there. The app also relies heavily on gamification and offers a unique “houseparty” like experience by allowing people on the call to play games with each other, pass notes to each other and much more. 

So, is playing games with your contact list the only use case? NO.

The Brilliant low-cost Go To Market Strategy:

When Ben and Sima were launching the MVP of the app — they decided to go to a university and encourage the students there to use it. Before they knew, groups of students were using the app to do homework together as they would do in sleepovers. The possibilities of what you can do with the application are endless.

As a closing note, I definitely want to point out something that may turn to be negative for Houseparty eventually would be that people may not want to share their online status with everyone since it takes away a bit of privacy. That’s something to ponder on. However, I did end up learning that this wasn’t yet another video calling app, it is a virtual houseparty experience. 

Let me know what you think of my analysis and if there’s anything interesting about the app that you’d want to share. 

References:

1. https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/28/13081014/meerkat-houseparty-video-app
2. Podcast: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/greylock-partners/greymatter/e/51309895?autoplay=true