Houseparty vies with Zoom to be homebound chatters’ app of choice
- Houseparty’s free app, available on mobile and desktop, lets people video chat as well as remotely play games
- It was the second most downloaded app of any category over the Easter weekend in the US, behind only Zoom
Sima Sistani has been getting through the coronavirus outbreak’s shelter-in-place order the past month in many of the same ways others have: home-schooling her 7-year-old, trading off parenting shifts with her husband, and jumping from room to room to find a quiet space for phone calls.
“I’m basically in whatever room my kids are not in,” she said.
But Sistani’s work life has been dramatically changed in one way that is unique: as co-founder and chief executive of video-chat app Houseparty, which has surged in popularity since early March, she is suddenly leading a company that has evolved from a low-pressure way to chat with friends to a legitimate lifeline for those unexpectedly stuck indoors.
“I used to always tell people, like, ‘hey, we’re not curing cancer here’,” Sistani said in an interview – conducted over Houseparty – from her home in San Francisco this week. “This is the first time where I feel like, wow, we have such a responsibility and an obligation right now to maintain this service because people need it. It’s critical for them right now.”
Alongside Zoom Video Communications, Houseparty may be the product that most defines the current moment, when some 300 million Americans have been urged to stay home to help mitigate the spread of Covid-19.