Houseparty

About

Houseparty is a social media service and application used for group video chat between mobile and desktop devices. The application also offers a variety of games to be played in chat.

History

The followup to the live-streaming application Meerkat, its founders, Life on Air, built Houseparty under a pseudonym in ten months between 2015 and 2016. They hoped to distance themselves from the live-streaming application because, as the Verge^[1] writes, "Meerkat didn’t want to associate its name with the new product. The company had just raised millions of dollars in support of public live streaming, after all, and a pivot to private sharing was likely to generate noisy criticism."

Life On Air released the app to the public in 2016 on the Google Play Store and iOS App Store.

Features

The interface of Houseparty resembles other camera-based social media application, such as Snapchat. Users can search for other users, sync their address book, share screen, send video messages and play games. These games include "Heads Up," "Trivia," "Chips and Guac" and "Quick Draw."

Highlights

Acquisition By Epic Games

In June 2019, Epic Games, the creators of Fortnite acquired Houseparty for an undisclosed amount and made Life on Air its subsidiary.

In a blogpost,^[2] Housepoarty CEO and co-founder Sima Sistani wrote:

Joining Epic is a great step forward in achieving our mission of bringing empathy to online communication. We have a common vision to make human interaction easier and more enjoyable, and always with respect for user privacy.

Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney wrote:

Houseparty brings people together, creating positive social interactions in real time. By teaming up, we can build even more fun, shared experiences than what could be achieved alone.

Data Breach Rumors

In March 2020, rumors that Houseparty had been hacked spread throughout the internet. The company dismissed these rumors as a "smear campaign." On March 30th, 2020, on the Houseparty Twitter account the company offered a $1 million bounty for proof of the smear campaign (shown below).

They wrote, "We are investigating indications that the recent hacking rumors were spread by a paid commercial smear campaign to harm Houseparty. We are offering a $1,000,000 bounty for the first individual to provide proof of such a campaign to bounty@houseparty.com."

Criticism of Privacy Policy

While no proof of the data breach has been found, some have criticized the company's data policies. According to TechCruch, ^[4] Ray Walsh of the ProPrivacy research firm called the app a "privacy nightmare."

He continues:

Anybody who decides to use the Houseparty application to stay in contact during quarantine needs to be aware that the app collects a worrying amount of personal information. This includes geolocation data, which could, in theory, be used to map the location of each user. A closer look at Houseparty’s privacy policy reveals that the firm promises to anonymize and aggregate data before it is shared with the third-party affiliates and partners it works with. However, time and time again, researchers have proven that previously anonymized data can be re-identified.

TechCruch's reporting also recommends using the app's "private mode" and "locked" rooms. They also suggest turning off location data, use false information, such as names and birthdates, do not connect other social apps, and "launch the app on iOS with a long press to 'sneak into the house' without notifying all your contacts."

Search Interest

External References