Houseparty time? Houseparty is the new social media hype in the world of social media. Houseparty is part of the Meerkat company. To refresh your mind Meerkat is a livestream app, which enables you to livestream videos on Twitter (Jongh, 2015). Meerkat quickly grew in the Netherlands to about 300.000 followers, but it never increased with big numbers like that. Nowadays Meerkat is a forgotten app, mostly due to the reason that Twitter also struggles at the moment.
So what did Meerkat do?
Meerkat decided to create a social medium instead of reviving their current app. So they created Houseparty. Houseparty takes video chat to a new level. The creators of Houseparty want to give users a Houseparty (That simple), but it the digital world. Houseparty enables users to start a video chat with their friends. Whenever one of your friends is online you can add them in a video conversation (Baak, 2016).
Looking at some trends for 2017 (Kerkhofs, 2016), the future looks promising for Houseparty. The following trends can have a positive influence for the Houseparty app:
- Mobile First. It is all about your smartphone!
- Live videos and video content
Especially the last trend is really interesting for Houseparty, because this is the thing the app is all about.
But is Houseparty going to survive
If there is one video-app for Houseparty to follow, then it is definitely Snapchat. Snapchat explosively grown the last couple of years and Houseparty is aiming to reach a similar target. But is this going to happen? Probably not…
Looking at the financial status of the company it is not good. The start-up grew quickly due to the success of Meerkat. But after a couple of months growth declined and now the company is facing to decrease its organization in order to be viable (Wagner, 2016). This is the reason why I believe Houseparty is just a hype and hasn’t got the long-term live of other apps like Snapchat.
Secondly, Houseparty is going to face some fierce competition from other companies who are already exploring video chat opportunities. The number one app is of course Skype, which already enables video chat with friends. The only difference with Houseparty is that you get an invite instead of being invited automatically. Skype and Facetime are two programmes that have simply a huge user base and it will be very difficult for Houseparty to cope with such big competitors.
This are just two reasons that indicate the challenges Houseparty is going to face in the future. It will be a very interesting process to follow.
Bibliography
Baak, C. (2016, June 26). Houseparty videochat app makers meerkat . Opgehaald van Androidworld : https://androidworld.nl/apps/houseparty-videochat-app-makers-meerkat/
Jongh, A. d. (2015, March 25). Meerkat wat is het en waarom is het juist nu zo populair . Retrieved from Dutchcowboys: http://www.dutchcowboys.nl/online/meerkat-wat-is-het-en-waarom-is-het-juist-nu-zo-populair
Kerkhofs, S. (2016, October 13). 12 social media-trends die 2017 gaan domineren. Retrieved from Frankwatching : https://www.frankwatching.com/archive/2016/10/13/12-social-media-trends-die-2017-gaan-domineren/
Wagner, K. (2016, September 26). Houseparty, the new app from the Meerkat team, is going through some growing pains. Retrieved from Recode: http://www.recode.net/2016/9/26/13055324/houseparty-meerkat-layoffs-new-office-hires
Dennis van Iersel Blog 