Ain’t no party, like a Houseparty party!!

It’s been around for a bit now and likely everyone made the mass migration over to Houseparty during ISO, however if you’re new to the app, or just want to know what the hell your kids are doing. Here’s the lowdown.

Houseparty is a new face-to-face social networking app that has been excellent for socialising while people have been confined to their houses during isolation. It is similar to Facetime, only this app a little more fun. The biggest difference? Houseparty gives you the ability to video chat with multiple friends at once – just like a real houseparty! The app will notify your friends whenever you open the app; likewise, you will be notified when one of them is “in the house”. 

I have been using Houseparty a lot during lockdown to keep in contact with my friends, cousins, and awesome big sister of course… Within three days of downloading the app I’d already spent about 7 hours using it (shhh don’t tell my parents)! While in isolation, Houseparty gave me the most human interaction (excluding the my family I live with) I’d had in several weeks… 

Pros:

• Houseparty is an easy app to use. There is a “House rules” section in the settings that explains everything, and this makes it easy to explore the features when you’re new to the app.
• Houseparty works on your desktop as well as your phone. I personally prefer using it on my MacBook.
• You have control over the app. If you’re unsure about Friends of Friends joining the call, you can easily stop others joining the conversation by “locking” the room. You can also customise your notifications if they are becoming too frequent or if you’d prefer someone didn’t know when you were online.Parents this is a feature I’d enable if you’ve younger kids on the app.
• Rather than call, you can also send your friends notes or leave them a Facemail – a short video message. 
• Houseparty has games to play! The ability to play a mix of games with friends is one of the best features of the app. My favourite is Trivia, where you can legit play a game of Trivia with your friends, the cards and questions coming up separately and it’s a lot of fun.
• If you want to connect with a friend, you can let them know you want to chat by “waving” at them to say hi.
  

Cons:

• Constant digital social time. Honestly, as an introvert this app overwhelmed me to start with, the idea of people you barely know being able to join my call or my friends knowing when I’d joined made it quite daunting.
• I find that games won’t work on my desktop and this makes me a bit sad because it’s a great feature of the app and one of the reasons I like to use it.
• The connection isn’t always great. Even with quite good internet, I find that calls occasionally freeze, and the audio can be glitchy or echoing. This happens quite frequently for me and can be frustrating. FaceTime is much better app for call and video quality if you’d rather not have the added features mentioned above.
• Drunk random people your sister knows randomly jump into the chat (this is also why the lock feature is good, but also they were also a pro lol)

As restrictions start to ease, would I recommend downloading Houseparty? YES!! If you are looking for a fun way to video call your group of friends, family and have a bit of fun, this is a great way to do so.

If this time and app has taught me and well anyone anything, it’s the importance of real connections and keeping up with people, and this is a super fun way to do It is free to download on your iOS, Android macOS and Chrome here: https://houseparty.com/

Go forth and HOUSEPARTY it up!!

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