With more people working remotely and less able to see friends and family than ever before, our schedules have never been more full of video calls. This is a good thing, as it keeps us connected, but it also can require meticulous scheduling, sharing links, making sure that everyone shows up on time, and struggling to ensure that everyone’s cameras and microphones are correctly configured.
If you’ve had to help an older family member get a complicated video chat app working, you know just how frustrating this can be and very well may have lost an entire evening of conversation due to technical difficulties or waiting for someone to show up. In short, video chat isn’t always a fun way to connect with others when it comes with the weight of expectations.
Doing Away With Expectations
Now, there’s Houseparty – a face-to-face social network that helps people connect with friends and family without all of the hangups.
Houseparty feels less like a premeditated video conference and more like its namesake. It’s a platform designed to facilitate a spontaneous, easy conversation with friends and family. Unlike other video conferencing platforms, where conversations can include dozens (or hundreds) of faces at a time, Houseparty can connect up to eight people simultaneously.
Users can come and go as they please, and because the app makes it easy to see who among your contacts is also on the platform, you never know who might pop in. In fact, it’s astoundingly easy to make connections with friends of friends via Houseparty – just like you might when you’re actually at a friend’s house.
Creating New Experiences
After months of video calls, it’s easy to feel like you’ve gotten stuck in a routine. “How are you doing?” turns into a handful of updates about food, TV shows, mutual friends, extended family members, and the dramas and challenges of daily life. Lots of people who talk frequently have felt like it’s easy to run out of things to say, and conversations can fizzle out or feel like they’ve started to drag, no matter how much you care about the people you’re talking to.
With an ever-rotating cast of friends, Houseparty makes it easy to say hello to someone new. Your mutuals may connect for the first time, discover that they have more in common than they thought they did, and perhaps even make plans to hang out in real life at some point in the future.
Finding Something New to Talk About
For Houseparty superfans, there’s one thing that keeps them coming back more than anything else: great games. Unlike other social platforms, Houseparty has a number of games built directly into the app. When things feel slow, you can always play a game with your friends.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CD4e190HBCL/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
For example, you can play a round of Houseparty Trivia. Trivia brings the classic bar (and party) staple to your device, giving you a wide range of topics to choose from. It even includes a number of different tie-ins with TV shows like “Friends” and the massively popular online video game “Fortnite,” which awarded a special bonus item to over 20 million Houseparty users during a special event in April.
Pepsi and the UEFA Champions League also partnered to create a custom Champions League trivia deck to promote the league’s launch this August, with Manchester United star Paul Pogba hopping into a game of trivia at the exact moment when a question about him was being asked.
Go Beyond Talking
Houseparty also includes games like Quick Draw – the platform’s take on a beloved party classic. One player gets an opportunity to show off their artistic skills (or lack thereof), and everyone else has to figure out what it is, much to everyone’s amusement. It’s a chance to let people know more about you than might ever come across in an ordinary video conference and a great way to get to know your friends, both new and old.
Another Houseparty game that can truly lead to some surprising results is Heads Up! The popular party game has been brought into the digital space, as shown off on an episode of “Ellen” in 2019 and played frequently online since. Houseparty provides players with free decks, including Act It Out, Superstars, and Animals Gone Wild. In Animals Gone Wild, for example, one player receives the name of an animal and has to reveal what they are to the other player using only facial expressions and sounds. It often gets big laughs, and it’s likely something that you never thought you’d see on camera after a long day of work conversations.
The Houseparty app is always being updated with new activities and opportunities to connect, making it a great way to keep up with friends, no matter what’s going on.
