Earlier this week, Meerkat developer Life on Air launched Houseparty, an app focused on providing its users with a fantastic group video chatting experience. The US release of this app marks an important milestone for the company which many were predicting will crumble after Meerkat failed to capture enough attention from users who moved on to other live-streaming solutions like Facebook Live and Periscope. Even though the company’s original app is still live on the Play Store, the very process in which Houseparty was developed shows that Life on Air has learned its lesson, Digital Trends’ Saqib Shah claims and is most likely correct.
For starters, the studio developed its latest mobile offering in complete secrecy, working for 10 months under the pseudonym of Herzick Apps. This was a conscious decision made in order to avoid the media spotlight that was inevitable after the rise and fall of Meerkat which was rumored to be turning into a fully fledged social network earlier this year. Back then, the company’s CEO Ben Rubin admitted that competing with the likes of Facebook Live and the Twitter-owned Periscope is a battle that a comparatively small studio simply cannot win and hinted that the company is working on something big and completely different. Most people figured this means Meerkat will change from the inside out but Life on Air decided on a more radical approach.
More specifically, the company’s decision to develop the app under a pseudonym and completely drop the Meerkat brand out of the equation was incredibly bold and is now seemingly paying off. Houseparty is currently boasting around a million users and that number is rapidly growing now that the app launched in the US. Namely, Life on Air already introduced its group video chatting solution to most other territories months ago and has only decided to “return” to the States once it was completely confident in its product. The studio is currently solely targeting students and has designed Houseparty just as organically as it’s marketing it – without unnecessary explanations. This bold and confident approach to both development and marketing seems to be making Life on Air relevant again and can definitely serve as a lesson in adaptability, humility, and creativity to app creators worldwide.