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JP Mangalindan is a senior contributing writer to dot.LA. His work has appeared in numerous publications over the last 18 years, including Bloomberg Businessweek, Fortune Magazine, GQ Magazine, Protocol, Entertainment Weekly, Mashable and Yahoo Finance. JP earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Fordham University.
One brisk Friday evening in January at around 9:30 p.m., 15-year-old Ella rushed down the stairs of her home in Stevenson Ranch, California with an announcement for her parents, who were watching "Lupin," a new Netflix series, in the living room.
"Can you get off of Netflix in 15 minutes?" she asked. "I'm having a watch party at 10. Thanks."
Every few weeks, Ella and her four best friends assembled at their laptops, snacks and drinks in hand, to watch something on the popular streaming service with Teleparty, a browser extension that lets users view the same Netflix movie or show at the same time. On tap for tonight? Two episodes of "Gilmore Girls," a show Ella and her "best friend crew" had never seen. Although Ella, whose parents asked us to withhold her full name because she is a minor, couldn't be in the same room with her girlfriends, this solution proved the next best thing — and for the girls that night, it was.
Ella and her friends are just a handful of the millions of people who have adapted to these unprecedented times. With people now spending more time than ever at home because of the pandemic, streaming services are meeting demand by doling out fresh content and serving up new features that expand the viewing experience.
Over the last 12 months, Hulu, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime Video and Sling all rolled out virtual watch parties, enabling groups of people to watch shows and films at the same time. These features were in the works well before COVID-19 struck, but the pandemic spurred them to step up development.
Hulu's Watch Party feature launched in May 2020.
Rolling out features like virtual parties is crucial in the battle for attracting and retaining users. According to a Deloitte survey published this month, 62% of people who signed up for a streaming service, did so to watch a specific show or film and canceled their subscription once they were done watching it. Features like virtual watch parties bring a social element into the equation that keep users engaged longer.
For Hulu, the Watch Party feature it launched its beta version in May 2020 started as an employee and intern hackathon project nine months before. But when the pandemic forced local governments to issue stay-at-home orders, Hulu accelerated plans for Watch Party and developed the feature in less than eight weeks. They rolled it out after initial tests indicated that over 75% of subscribers who hosted a Watch Party said they would do it again.
"We know that watching your favorite shows and movies has always been a social experience, and with TV becoming more synonymous with streaming, streaming has inherently become even more social," said Jason Wong, director of product management at Hulu, who added that the speedy development of Watch Party also stemmed from the fact that 60% of Hulu subscribers already streamed shows and films with others in their home, yielding a social experience unto itself.
"It was an ambitious timeline, but once we identified this need from our viewers, our team was very motivated to quickly deliver something."
In the 24 hours after launching Watch Party last December, Hulu saw over 10,000 unique Watch Party sessions with 60% of viewers in a Watch Party coming from its ad-supported plan. Moreover, Hulu tells dot.LA exclusively that users have held about 1.5 million Watch Party sessions to date, in which nearly 30 million messages were sent through the feature — and it continues to grow in popularity. According to Wong, the number of Watch Parties grew 5x from November to December last year.
Hulu experienced a 97% increase in Watch Parties when Christmas comedy "Happiest Season" debuted in November.
New show premieres like the LGBTQ+ coming out series "Love, Victor" and Season 2 premiere of the teen comedy "Pen15," as well as films such as "Deadpool," "Parasite," and the Hulu original film "Palm Springs," proved particularly popular for Hulu Watch Parties. Also big? Episodic premieres, like "The Bachelor" and "A Teacher," a Hulu original limited series starring Kate Mara. When "Happiest Season," a Christmas comedy starring Kristen Stewart, Daniel Levy and Alison Brie debuted on Thanksgiving, Hulu experienced a whopping 97% increase in Watch Parties.
Five months later, Disney Plus released its own GroupWatch feature. The rapidly growing streaming service, which reported 86.8 million subscribers in December, took a different tack with GroupWatch, however: users can click any one of six "reactions," or emoji, that pop up onscreen during a viewing, but they can't send text-based messages.
That was a purposeful decision, contends Michael Cerdà, vice president of product at Disney Plus.
During GroupWatch's development, the Disney Plus product team conducted extensive research to identify what worked and what didn't. For instance, GroupWatch currently allows up to seven people in a GroupWatch session — a number the group settled on after agreeing that any more people in a session made it "too noisy."
"In our research, one of the big takeaways was that people wanted to feel like they were a part of something, but we didn't want to get in the way of the content," said Cerdà.
While Disney did not disclose engagement numbers around GroupWatch, Cerda acknowledged that Disney Plus users are more likely to hold GroupWatch sessions when highly-awaited new films and shows premiere, when Disney Plus launches in a new region, and around the holidays. Last Halloween, Tim Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas" was the focus of many GroupWatch sessions. Other programming like the recently-released series "WandaVision," "The Mandalorian," "Frozen 2," "Lion King," "Clouds" and "Avengers: Endgame" also proved popular for GroupWatch sessions.
Sling's Watch Party, which launched last September, takes things one step further than its rivals, allowing up to four people to participate through video chat. For the Sling product development team, video chat was a "must have" part of Watch Party.
"When you're watching something in real-time, so much of our responses can't be verbalized," explains Jon Lin, vice president of product at Sling TV. "If something is really impactful, you'll see it on the faces of your friends and family. That's the kind of connection we wanted to capture with Watch Party, which is why we focused so much on creating a video chat feature — so it felt like the people you are watching with are actually right there next to you."
Disney Plus is currently exploring expanding the ways users can communicate and share during GroupWatch sessions
Sling also would not disclose specific engagement numbers around their new feature, but said live events like sports have proven very popular for Watch Party users. The streaming service also saw an uptick on the evening of the 2020 U.S. presidential election in November, as well as around Christmas movies during the holidays, says Lin.
Netflix doesn't offer a comparable group watching feature yet — the third-party extension from Teleparty fills the gap for now — but it's likely coming. For services like Hulu, Disney Plus, Sling, Prime Video and others, the feature is yet another way to incrementally boost engagement on their platforms, particularly during a time when it's difficult — or in many cases, strongly discouraged — for people to mingle in groups.
"Streaming services have quickly adapted, and I think it makes absolute sense — it brings a social element, sort of like going to a movie theater," says Eunice Shin, a digital strategy partner who leads media entertainment and direct-to-consumer efforts at Prophet, a growth strategy consulting company. "It's smart for them to pull the feature onto their platform, as opposed to using a separate app like Airtime."
Virtual watch parties aren't just here to stay, it seems. Services are also finding ways to shore up the experience to make them more compelling.
Based on user feedback, Disney Plus is currently exploring expanding the ways users can communicate and share during GroupWatch sessions, including possibly text-based chat or offering more emoji reactions. Hulu said users are clamoring for the ability to throw a Watch Party with their friends on different devices. (The feature only works on desktop browsers at the moment.) Meanwhile, Sling recently updated the design of Watch Party's chat messaging and upped the number of non-Sling TV subscribers who can join Watch Parties, from one to three.
"It's only going to get better — it's going to get more refined." says Cerdà of virtual watch party experiences. "I think we're at the front end of something even bigger."***This story has been updated to correct the timeline provided by Hulu regarding its Watch Party data.
JP Mangalindan is a senior contributing writer to dot.LA. His work has appeared in numerous publications over the last 18 years, including Bloomberg Businessweek, Fortune Magazine, GQ Magazine, Protocol, Entertainment Weekly, Mashable and Yahoo Finance. JP earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Fordham University.
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
According to a Forbes report last April, both the viewership and dollars behind women’s sports at a collegiate and professional level are growing.
In 2022, the first 32 games of the NCAA tournament had record attendance levels, breaking records set back in 2004, and largely driven by the new and rapidly growing women’s NCAA tournament. WNBA openers this year saw a 21% spike in attendance, with some teams including the LA Sparks reporting triple-digit ticket sales growth, about 121% over 2022’s total. In 2023, the average size of an LA Sparks crowd swelled to 10,396 people, up from 4,701 people.
Women make up half the population, but “also 50% of the folks that are walking into the stadium at Dodger Stadium, or your NFL fans are just about 50% women,” noted Erin Storck, a panelist and senior analyst at Los Angeles-based Elysian Park Ventures.
Storck added that in heterosexual households, women generally manage most of the family’s money, giving them huge purchasing power, a potential advantage for female-run leagues. “There's an untapped revenue opportunity,” she noted.
In the soccer world, Los Angeles-based women’s soccer team Angel City FC has put in the work to become a household name, not just in LA County but across the nation. At an LA Tech Week panel hosted by Athlete Strategies about investing in sports, Angel City head of strategy and chief of staff Kari Fleischauer said that years before launching the women’s National Women’s Soccer League team, Angel City FC was pounding the pavement letting people know about the excitement ladies soccer can bring. She noted community is key, and that fostering a sense of engagement and safety at the team’s home venue, BMO stadium (formerly Banc of California Stadium), is one reason fans keep coming back.
Adding free metro rides to BMO stadium and private rooms for nursing fans to breastfeed or fans on the spectrum to avoid sensory overload, were just some of the ways ACFC tried to include its community in the concept of its stadium, Fleischauer said. She noted, though, that roughly 46% of Angel City fans are “straight white dudes hanging out with their bros.”
“Particularly [on] the woman's side, I'd like to think we do a better job of making sure that there's spaces for everyone,” Fleischauer told the audience. “One thing we realize is accessibility is a huge thing.”
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
L.A. Tech Week has brought venture capitalists, founders and entrepreneurs from around the world to the California coast. With so many tech nerds in one place, it's easy to laugh, joke and reminisce about the future of tech in SoCal.
Here's what people are saying about the fifth day of L.A. Tech Week on social:
#LATechWeek has been on 🔥🔥🔥. Yes the events are super cool at amazing venues. But, I’m blown away by the people. I’ve met so many founders building generative AI companies from the ground up. I’m so bullish on LA right now🥳. LA is for builders #longLA
Thanks @rpnickson 📸 pic.twitter.com/B6rT2jJYIs
— Dr. Kelly O'Brien (@Kvo2013) June 8, 2023
Successful LatinxVC Avanza Summit 2023 in LA! It’s been an amazing few days near the beach w great company. Thank you to our panelists & participants.
Huge thanks to our incredible sponsors SVB, Chavez Family Foundation, Annenberg Foundation, PledgeLA, Fenwick & West, Countsy! pic.twitter.com/oVuGIgFurk
— LatinxVC (@LatinxVCs) June 9, 2023
30+ gaming startups presented at the A16z Speedrun Demo Day in LA yesterday. Great thanks to the @a16zGames team for an awesome day of events! #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/DKq8IFo5QZ
— Grace Zhou (@graceminzhou) June 9, 2023
📣🤩 What’s the buzz? It’s #LATechWeek from @TechstarsLA & @TechstarsHealth joint demo day with the #Techstar HC team where our @fyelabs founder/CEO Suvojit Ghosh mentored both cohorts! #TechStars demo day highlighted 12 amazing emerging #startups in #healthtech #innovation. 🩺 pic.twitter.com/0RXClCtfDQ
— FYELABS (@fyelabs) June 9, 2023
Another successful Coffee On Slauson in the books for #LATechWeek.
Special thanks to the good people at Pledge LA, SVB and @GundersonLaw for the ongoing support and the @findyourhilltop staff for providing the space, eats & vibes. ♻️ pic.twitter.com/51cMDoEn30
— Slauson & Co. (@SlausonAndCo) June 9, 2023
The perfect combo to start #LATechWeek Day 5: pastries, coffee, and great convos with industry founders ✨
Fireside chats with @enriquealle, @wp, and @robynpark pic.twitter.com/booYPdekVV
— Tech Week (@Techweek_) June 9, 2023
Of course @designerfund has the most amazing pastries at their event. #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/PjyWlGTQI4
— Jesse Pickard (@jessepickard) June 9, 2023
My favorite event from @Techweek_ has to be "Modern Storytelling & Business Building." Hosted by @STHoward #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/SV1eexMJ4k
— JonnyZeller (@JonnyZeller) June 9, 2023
And the finale of the night was courtesy of the one and only @zedd for an unforgettable end to the "City of Games" party! Hosted by @a16zGames and @100Thieves #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/hliI9yLKse
— Tech Week (@Techweek_) June 9, 2023
Excited to be at the @a16zGames Speedrun Demo Day! Loved the energy and excitement from the companies that pitched there. It was also great to see @Tocelot and @ndrewlee at this amazing #LATechWeek event pic.twitter.com/NfLQO5lR27
— Andy Lee | andypwlee.bit (@andypwlee) June 9, 2023
Thank you to everyone who joined the Sony Venture Fund US team at #LATechWeek for our screening of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Last summer, we started building a presence in LA. Today, it's exciting to host such an event with the @Sony family and the LA VC community. pic.twitter.com/wdDm6qtHdL
— Sony Innovation Fund (@Sony_Innov_Fund) June 9, 2023
Time to eat, connect and build while @remi_rodney provided the vibes. 🙏🏽#LATechWeek @BuildOnBase @developer_dao @WeAreRazorfish pic.twitter.com/QIPh1gjvoA
— Hola Metaverso-Blockchain & New Web Tech Events 🎪 (@holametaverso) June 9, 2023
@Lux_Capital at #LATechWeek advancing the impossible to inevitable, from..
..defense primes partnering with cutting edge defense tech startups, to..
..hardware x LLMs improving mental health.
From the rich and diverse LA ecosystem stems generational companies: pic.twitter.com/v5S5r8JtbU
— Shahin Farshchi (@Farshchi) June 9, 2023
LA Tech Week has been a blast! Met some amazing creators, founders and investors from all over the world! #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/AAh9JFELhe
— Chris Germano (@netslayer) June 9, 2023
Had such a blast at LA Tech Week and hosting events for @brexHQ
Top highlights were collabing with @pulley on an Emerging Managers / Founder mixer at the @poplco House, rooftop event in Venice, creator panel with @thechangj & proper Korean food with in KTown.
Exhausted is an… pic.twitter.com/mGQnSYGPdg
— Τyler Robinson (@TyyRob3) June 9, 2023
Did you have fun at @sophiaamoruso’s launch party for @trustfundvc? #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/gbrbXRQ9Xx
— Kay (@KaySnels) June 9, 2023
y00tilty in every city with @KaylaLor3n & @cryptochrisg813.
Welcome to the LA @y00tsNFT fam! #LATechWeek #3XP week. pic.twitter.com/6wWKlsTacx
— VanG0xH (@CryptoVanGoghs) June 9, 2023
Really enjoyed #LATechWeek. Here are some observations I made 👇
— s.personal.ai (Suman Kanuganti) (@SumanPersonalAI) June 9, 2023
Thank you @TheKofiAmpadu for including me in #demoday with the latest @a16ztxo cohort! It was a real full circle moment to witness the brilliance of both @ChrisLyons & @ZMuse_ & #PledgeLA very own. She’s why we’re #LongLA 🚀💕 #LAtechweek pic.twitter.com/itkKXMxQRb
— Qiana Qiana! (@Q_i_a_n_a) June 9, 2023
@upfrontvc Gaming Founders Podcast #iLOVELA #LATechWeek @Techweek_ @KatiaAmeri @mucker @fikavc @bonfire_vc @TenOne10 @WatertowerGroup @ganasvc @IAmRobRyan @john_at_stonks @eva_ho @dereknorton pic.twitter.com/LCbaGXCoW7
— Sean Goldfaden (@seangoldfaden) June 9, 2023
Hosts Kevin Zhang, Partner at @upfrontvc, and Eden Chen, CEO of @pragmaplatform, interviewed two special guests from @raidbaseinc Stephen Lim, Co-Founder & Product Director, and Trevor Romleski, Co-Founder & Game Director. 🎙 #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/hxHEAoELZ6
— Tech Week (@Techweek_) June 9, 2023
Kicking off @a16zGames @100Thieves City of Games party at #LATechWeek 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/zQcZedG15f
— Jon Lai (@Tocelot) June 9, 2023
Yesterday at @socinnovation I got to have this AWESOME conversation with @iamwill — musician, producer, technology entrepreneur, and Founder & CEO of https://t.co/D60y1e2JOu #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/KBxK6rXyTG
— Anna Barber (@annawbarber) June 9, 2023
I absolutely love this game. Proud moment for the team @investwithatlas. #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/fPZvKXU7TC
— Tobias Francis (@TobiasFrancis) June 9, 2023
Had a blast at LA Tech Week this year with @brexHQ
From hosting & moderating my first creator panel featuring @BlakeMichael14, to a fun rooftop night in Venice, and to attending some amazing events such as Watertower’s emerging manager panel and a VC/founder tennis tournament pic.twitter.com/udjfmLHE0L
— Jonathan Chang (@thechangj) June 8, 2023
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
At Lowercarbon Capital’s LA Tech Week event Thursday, the synergy between the region’s aerospace industry and greentech startups was clear.
The event sponsored by Lowercarbon, Climate Draft (and the defunct Silicon Valley Bank’s Climate Technology & Sustainability team) brought together a handful of local startups in Hawthorne not far from LAX, and many of the companies shared DNA with arguably the region’s most famous tech resident: SpaceX.
Here’s a look at the greentech startups that pitched during the Tech Week event, and how they think what they’re building could help solve the climate crisis.
Arbor: Based in El Segundo, this year-old startup is working to convert organic waste into energy and fresh water. At the same time, it also uses biomass carbon removal and storage to remove carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in an attempt to avoid further damaging the earth’s ozone layer. At the Tech Week event Thursday, Arbor CEO Brad Hartwig told a stunned crowd that Arbor aims to remove about five billion tons of organic waste from landfills and turn that into about 6 PWh, or a quarter of the global electricity need, each year. Hartwig is an alumni of SpaceX; he was a manufacturing engineer on the Crew Dragon engines from 2016-2018 and later a flight test engineer at Kitty Hawk.
Antora: Sunnyvale-based Antora Energy was founded in 2017, making it one of the oldest companies on the pitching block during the event. Backed by investors including the National Science Foundation and Los Angeles-based Overture VC, Antora has raised roughly $57 million to date, most recently a $50 million round last February. Chief operating officer Justin Briggs said Antora’s goal is to modernize and popularize thermal energy storage using ultra-hot carbon. Massive heated carbon blocks can give off thermal energy, which Antora’s proprietary batteries then absorb and store as energy. It’s an ambitious goal, but one the world needs at scale to green its energy footprint. According to Briggs, “the biggest challenge is how can we turn back variable intermittent renewable electricity into something that's reliable and on demand, so we can use it to provide energy to everything we need.”
Arc: Hosting the panel was Arc, an electric boating company that’s gained surprising momentum, moving from design to delivering its first e-boats in just two years of existence. Founded in 2021, the company’s already 70 employees strong and has already sold some of its first e-boats to customers willing to pay the luxury price tag, CTO Ryan Cook said Thursday. Cook said that to meet the power needs of a battery-powered speedboat, the Arc team designed the vehicle around the battery pack with the goal of it being competitive with gas boats when compared to range and cost of gas. But on the pricing side, it’s not cheap. Arc’s flagship vessel, the Arc One is expected to cost roughly $300,000. During the panel, Cook compared the boat to being “like an early Tesla Roadster.” To date Arc Boats has raised just over $35 million, according to PitchBook, from investors including Kevin Durant, Will Smith and Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Clarity Technology: Carbon removal startup Clarity is based in LA and was founded by Yale graduate and CEO Glen Meyerowitz last year. Clarity is working to make “gigaton solutions for gigaton problems.” Their aim? To remove up to 2,000 billion pounds of carbon from the atmosphere through direct air capture, a process which uses massive fans to move chemicals that capture CO2. But the challenge, Meyerowitz noted in his speech, is doing this at scale in a way that makes an actual dent in the planet’s emissions while also efficiently using the electricity needed to do so. Meyerowitz spent nearly five years working as an engineer for SpaceX in Texas, and added he’s looking to transfer those learnings into Clarity.
Parallel Systems: Based in Downtown LA’s Arts District, this startup is building zero-emission rail vehicles that are capable of long-haul journeys otherwise done by a trucking company. The estimated $700 billion trucking industry, Parallel Systems CEO Matt Soule said, is ripe for an overhaul and could benefit from moving some of its goods off-road to electric railcars. According to Soule, Parallel’s electric battery-powered rail vehicles use 25% of the energy a semi truck uses, and at a competitive cost. Funded in part by a February 2022 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, Parallel Systems has raised about $57 million to date. Its most recent venture funding round was a $49 million Series A led by Santa Monica-based VC Anthos Capital. Local VCs including Riot Ventures and Santa Monica-based Embark Ventures are also backers of Parallel.
Terra Talent: Unlike the rest of the startups pitching at the Tech Week event, Terra Talent was focused on building teams rather than technology. Founder Dolly Singh worked at SpaceX, Oculus and Citadel as a headhunter, and now runs Terra, a talent and advisory firm that helps companies recruit top talent in the greentech space. But, she said, she’s concerned that all the work these startups are doing won’t matter unless we very quickly turn around the current trendlines. “Earth will shake us off like and she will do just fine in 10,000 years,” she said. “It’s our way of living, everything we love is actually here on earth… there’s nothing I love on Mars,” adding that she’s hopeful the startups that pitched during the event will be instrumental in making sure the planet stays habitable for a little while longer.
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.