Andrew Heinzman
The Watch Party Beta program is sweeping across America. Soon, all popular Twitch streamers will be able to watch Prime shows and movies with their fans—provided that their fans have a Prime account.
But what about regular humans, like you and me? Well, we aren’t popular enough to host Twitch Watch Parties. We can watch Twitch personalities talk over episodes of Survivor, and we can send those weird custom emoji to a group chat, but that’s all there is to it.
Watch Parties are a great way to connect with people during a time when you can’t physically be in the same space and are sure to provide a lot of fun for livestreaming fan communities. But the limited access is kinda like a slap in the face. Twitch Watch Parties could be a pandemic-friendly feature for every Prime subscriber, but Amazon decided to hand the keys to wise-cracking gamers instead.
But hey, Amazon started working on Watch Parties way back in October of 2019. Maybe this popular-kid-only rule is just a test run for Watch Parties. Maybe Amazon will extend the service to regular people later this year. I guess we’ll just have to wait and find out.
In the meantime, you can use a 3rd party service to stream Prime Video with your friends. I suggest using Kast, a tool that streams video from your desktop into a group chat. Kast works with webcams, it doesn’t cost any money, and you can use it to share video from any streaming service.
