We've been patiently waiting for the next Pokémon GO, or another mobile game that taps into today's zeitgeist and becomes an instant cultural hit. Well, maybe that game is already here.
Design Home launched in late 2016 to bring virtual spaces to life with real-life furniture, and it has become quite popular under the radar. How it works: Players are presented with “challenges” to furnish a few empty rooms every day. They then choose a room to furnish, pick out the furniture and it's rated by others. It's kind of like The Sims, but for millennials who used to play The Sims.
Something to watch: this type of video game points to the future of advertising. When users are picking out furniture “virtually,” they're presented with a catalog of pieces from retailers like West Elm, Design With Reach, etc. Like the Sims, Design Home allows an escape from real life in favor of a fantasy. In this case, the fantasy is beautiful apartments filled with expensive furniture.
To date, the game has been downloaded over 50 million times and over one million people (typically women between ages 25-55) play the game every day.
We're also seeing products like this launch that aren't even gamified. Back in January, Amazon debuted Showroom to let shoppers virtually decorate their homes.
Prefer to live in the real-world? We went down the rabbit hole looking tools to improve homeownership:
⏰ Cost of Living Calculator for seeing how far your salary takes you
👀 Omni rentals for earning $$$ on stuff you own
🏠 Home Assistant for home automation
⛓ Rentberry Rent Payments for paying and collecting rent with crypto
🔎 Nobbas for house searching
🛀 Fairy for home cleaning
🙌 Hello Alfred for everything
🛋 Havenly for interior design
Product News! 😻
Caviar has a new feature that spotlights who's making your food by labeling restaurants as women-owned. Livestreaming toolkit company Lightstream scored $8M. Volvo has an all-electric response to Tesla's Model 3. And FedEx is rolling out same-day delivery bots.
