Social Tech - Netflix With Friends

I’ve posted a few times about different emerging social trends in the presence of the current pandemic and lockdowns. The internet has been at the forefront of keeping people entertained and perhaps contributing to maintaining mental stability for many where loneliness can easily take over. For many, it might have been a while since they’ve been able to Netflix and hang with their friends, partners or others. An indoor movie night is always appreciated. A friend of mine mentioned that he was “Netflix Partying” with his girlfriend, while both apart. For a moment I thought it was the usual Netflix experience but he then linked me to Netflixparty.com and showed me what all the buzz was about.

I have watched movies and shows online via Netflix with friends before. It’s a tough experience, getting things to sync up and talking about the show isn’t the easiest task in the world. In fact, it can be pretty cumbersome depending on setup and I have found myself giving up entirely at times. Enter Netflix Party, a way to watch sync video playback and enjoy group chats all on the fly. It’s a simple yet very useful feature that I had overlooked completely over the last few months and thought it was worth a share with you all today.

Simply put, Netflix party is a browser add-on for Chrome that allows one to create unique chat groups and single link invites through URL share. Friends will also need the add-on. Once setup, one simply has to click a desired movie and the extension does all the work to keep everyone in sync, pauses and starts included. A nifty chat bar is also displayed on the right hand side and it almost feels like Twitch chat meets Netflix.

I gave it a quick test and things seemed to sync up pretty easily and managed to watch a movie with a friend easily. The reviews on the Chrome store are less than savoury however, there are many complaints about not getting it to function. It worked for me and I am security conscious, changing my password immediately after a session. I am not certain around its security either, perhaps an open source alternative exists. I will have to browse around to see...

Keep in mind that both you and friends will need Netflix subscriptions to make things work and there are no voice or video call options, as expected. So in summary, it’s a cool add-on that made me realise there are other ways to solve the video watching sync issues, and it isn’t the only way either. I will be digging up a few more video sharing experiences in the coming days to share with you all.

If you want to find out more about the add-on, check it out here:
https://www.netflixparty.com/

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