Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around
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Re: Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around
#2Hello again, HN! I'm Andrew and I recently built and released Mixaba – it’s a new way to mix and mingle with people you already know online.
Since the shelter-in-place orders started rolling out in the US I've had the opportunity to attend remote happy hours and larger remote social events. During those video calls I found that oftentimes the conversation felt a little out of cadence or stilted because there would be a greater number of people in the same room than could have a comfortable conversation at any given time.
I struggle enough with social events that it's important to me to have as fluid and comfortable a conversation as possible...especially when remote. To me, part of that includes trying to avoid too many people speaking at the same time which can cause confusion and annoyance. Having 20 people all try to join the same casual conversation over video usually means someone is left out and unheard.
I wanted to create a way to get a little closer to the small-group experience we might find in-person where people naturally break off into small groups and chat and then move on. Zoom has breakout rooms but it's aimed closer to the enterprise, and if there are security concerns it can be nice to have an alternative that doesn't require installation or advanced permissions.
To that end, Mixaba is a small project that I proof-of-concepted that first weekend of our local shelter-in-place orders. One person creates a "party" and can optionally change the shuffle duration, room occupancy, and a secret code. They then share that link to as many of their friends or co-workers as they choose. Anyone who has the link (and optional secret code) can join the party without creating an account. As soon as people start joining a timer starts and based on the party configuration the participants will shuffle at the end of the timer and it starts again!
I've been refining the product and we've been using it at work for happy hours and lunches, and even family Easter get togethers. It's currently only on the web and has support across Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge. Phone support is experimental but it works pretty well on both iOS and Android. I'd love to see it turn into a mobile app as well for even better support.
It's free and there's no account needed to join a party, no desktop app download, and no 50 person limit. I'd love to get some feedback on whether you would find this useful or if there are any general comments or concerns!
Here's my previous post on HackerNews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23045293 and a comment on a quarantine side project post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23182747.
Re: Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around
#3I had this exact idea yesterday and thought "Why hasn't someone already made that?".
My team/org (20-ish people) has a Friday end of week social- even when we're all remote. Going to see if they want to try this instead of our usual 'taking turns talking while shy people say nothing'.
Re: Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around
#4I had this exact idea yesterday and thought "Why hasn't someone already made that?". My team/org (20-ish people) has a Friday end of week social- even when we're all remote. Going to see if they want to try this instead of our usual 'taking turns talking while shy people say nothing'.
Awesome! I'd love to hear how it works for you all and any feedback you might have.
Re: Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around
#5Looks great - I'd also be interested in a chat app that lets users move their camera in a 2D space, even across "rooms", so you can form small social groups. I know you can do these things in 3D in things like Mozilla Hubs but 2D would work better for most users
Re: Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around
#6Looks great - I'd also be interested in a chat app that lets users move their camera in a 2D space, even across "rooms", so you can form small social groups. I know you can do these things in 3D in things like Mozilla Hubs but 2D would work better for most users
Great idea! Being able to choose the rooms you enter or leave could be a good way to help make the party more organic.
Re: Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around
#7This is promising! Noting for later.
Has anyone seen the spatial audio only https://www.highfidelity.com/ too?
I'm looking at both of these this week.
Re: Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around
#8This is promising! Noting for later. Has anyone seen the spatial audio only https://www.highfidelity.com/ too? I'm looking at both of these this week.
That looks really neat, thanks for sharing!
Re: Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around
#9Interesting! I built something really similar last month, though less polished: https://happyhour.ianwdavis.com/
In my case, I let people create groups ("tables") on the fly and hop between them at will, rather than forced mixing. There's a list along the side that shows which people are at each group. Groups with fewer people sort to the top, to encourage people to join those.
I built on top of Jitsi and the meet.jit.si public servers for video chat. The quality hasn't been as good as something like Zoom, but I love how easy it is to embed and customize!
Re: Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around
#10Hello again, HN! I'm Andrew and I recently built and released Mixaba – it’s a new way to mix and mingle with people you already know online. Since the shelter-in-place orders started rolling out in the US I've had the opportunity to attend remote happy hours and larger remote social events. During those video calls I found that oftentimes the conversation felt a little out of cadence or stilted because there would be…
Thanks for building this! Curious to know why you went with random mixing, rather than self-sorting. I expect the timed random mixing would feel sort of heavy-handed, though I haven't tried it so maybe I'm wrong.
Also -- what did you use for the video chat component? I'm assuming you incorporated some existing software/service?