A look at video chat service Houseparty, which has topped the Australian, Canadian, and UK iOS App Stores and is like Zoom but with built-in games
ast Saturday night, Jason Shaverin, a 36-year-old project manager in London, spent three hours talking to friends on Houseparty …
Context & Ripple Effects
Houseparty's surge is a second act for Life On Air: after Meerkat's live-streaming bet stalled, the team pulled Meerkat from the App Store and rebuilt around group video chat — a pivot that has now paid off as lockdowns push socializing onto video. The app's differentiator is deliberate: where Zoom sells a meeting room, Houseparty bundles games into the call, a monetizable layer it seeded back when paid Heads Up word packs arrived in-app in 2019.
The momentum is measurable, not anecdotal: beyond topping the Australian, Canadian, and UK iOS charts, the app has since logged 50M signups in a month and a daily run atop the US social networking chart, and is now converting that audience into programmed entertainment with the celebrity co-watching series In The House.
First-order effects
- Houseparty's games-first format puts it in direct competition for the same stay-at-home social minutes that made Zoom a household verb, but with a younger, friend-group audience rather than workplaces.
- Life On Air's 2016 pivot from Meerkat is now validated by chart leadership in three countries plus the US, giving the company leverage to keep building on the app it nearly abandoned.
Second-order effects
- Rival video chat and social apps face pressure to copy the built-in games layer, since Houseparty has shown that in-call play — already proven monetizable via paid Heads Up packs — drives engagement pure video calling does not.
- Celebrity programming like In The House pushes Houseparty from utility toward media, forcing competitors to choose between licensing talent-driven co-watching events or ceding the entertainment layer.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, social video splits into two structures: workplace conferencing sold as software, and consumer socializing sold as a games-and-events platform — with the consumer side monetizing through in-app purchases and exclusive content rather than seats.
- The Meerkat-to-Houseparty arc is a template for consumer startups: kill a stalled product early, redirect the team to an adjacent format, and hold until a demand shock arrives.
The trend: Consumer video chat is consolidating around engagement platforms that bundle games and live events into calls, separating the social market from the enterprise conferencing market Zoom dominates.