If there was ever a mobile app that helped define an era, it is Houseparty. As the world locked itself away for a year during the global COVID-19 pandemic, there was a massive ramping up of interest in Houseparty.
With dates, social gatherings, and real house parties effectively banned worldwide, Houseparty came to the rescue. It enables multiple people to meet up, chat and socialize safely and securely.
While Houseparty made significant inroads into growing its customer base last year, the app's popularity shows no sign of slowing down. It's now quite definitely a permanent fixture for family and friends who are geographically diverse to stay in touch.
While not the same as face-to-face in the same room, Houseparty is the next best thing. And a great way to connect and hang out with people in your life who live many miles away.
● Connect with those you care about the most
● Alerts when your friends and family are online and `in the house'
● Video chatting
● Livestream your Fortnite gameplay
To distill it down, Houseparty is a social networking app for video chatting. The Houseparty chats take place in a room. However, you can have more than one room and mingle between them, much like a real party. You will also always know who is about and ready to chat as you receive a notification when a contact opens the app.
However, you can turn off these alerts and creep into the house unseen if you wish rather than making a grand entrance.
Since you can create an infinite number of rooms, the app lets you name each. The best parties, though, are always in the kitchen.
● It's free
● Good quality video chats
● You can also play games
● Not particularly innovative (apart from the new Fortnite streaming)
● House room size is limited to eight people
Houseparty is relatively `same same' as any other social network that has video chatting capability.
There's not a lot to learn; it's easy and intuitive to use.
The app is downloadable from Google Play and Apple's App Store. For Android users, the commitment varies depending on the device you are using.
iOS users need to run iOS 10.0 or later and give up 217.9 MB of storage space.
Both sets of users are in love with Houseparty. If this app were a person, they would be dating it, for sure, judging by the feedback being left.
Android and iOS users give Houseparty a double thumbs-up, awarding the app a solid 4.0 out of five on Google Play and a massive 4.9 out of five at the App Store.
There's also a Chrome extension, currently in beta, for meeting up with your homies on the web.
There's a FAQ page on the developer's website - one for Houseparty and the other for the new Fortnite streaming mode. Curiously, however, neither has a search function, so you need to scroll down in the hope of finding an answer.
