
Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around - andrewicarlson
https://mixaba.com
======
andrewicarlson
Hello 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](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23045293)
and a comment on a quarantine side project post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23182747](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23182747).

~~~
pjanoman
How do you fund this? I got semi-far with some friends on building a project
similar to this, however, we stopped halfway through because we realized that
video hosting quickly becomes quite expensive; without a monetization plan,
there'd be no way we could stay afloat. Looks great!

~~~
andrewicarlson
@mmcclure is right. This uses WebRTC and is currently in peer mode. As soon as
I start allowing more than 4 people per room that might cause some performance
issues, I’ll need to monitor that. As it stands now there is a hard cost, but
it isn’t prohibitive yet.

------
iwd
Interesting! I built something really similar last month, though less
polished: [https://happyhour.ianwdavis.com/](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!

~~~
ottobonn
Wow, this is _exactly_ the project I have been working on for the past few
weeks, down to the abstraction of "tables," "starting a new table," and
shuffling around at will! I was even building on top of jitsi. Mine was going
to be called "lunchbox"...

It's amazing to me how many people had this idea, and that it seemed not to
exist before. I am curious how far we can go to make video chat feel as good
as in-person socializing.

~~~
iwd
My Python code is up on Github under a BSD license, if you want to play with
it.
[https://github.com/iwd32900/happyhour](https://github.com/iwd32900/happyhour)

------
mabbo
I 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'.

~~~
andrewicarlson
Awesome! I'd love to hear how it works for you all and any feedback you might
have.

------
charlesdaniels
This sounds like a cool idea.

My feedback would be: add a demo or something. Let me see what you're pitching
before I go to the trouble of creating an account. Just a video of clicking
around in the UI for a few minutes would do the trick.

~~~
andrewicarlson
That’s definitely a common request today — I’ll get that done!

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technotony
How to create a social networking event remotely for a happy hour or business
networking event or party is an interesting unsolved problem. Here are a few
other early protypes from teams working on it. Both of these have a UI where
you walk around a 2d space and can communicate with groups nearby:

[https://theonline.town/](https://theonline.town/)

[https://www.highfidelity.com/](https://www.highfidelity.com/)

------
jackbrookes
Looks 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

~~~
rmellow
This is exactly [https://spatial.chat](https://spatial.chat)

~~~
skaul
Really wanted to try it out, but would have been nice if there was some demo
or something before they asked for my email

------
crsv
Similar to [https://rally.video](https://rally.video)

------
anegri
Really cool idea! I've tried the zoom breakout rooms, and they get the job
done for my use case, but its a bit clunky and doesn't seem to support
shuffling of groups at a regular interval

~~~
andrewicarlson
Thank you! That's good feedback on the Zoom breakout rooms – it is more aimed
toward the enterprise but I was thinking something like this might also be
useful for workshops where you want to disperse people at those regular
intervals. Obviously not the primary audience though since there are
enterprise tools in that space.

------
zhoujianfu
Feature suggestion!

Allow two participant types, with separate links to join the same event, and
then add the ability to (best effort) match type 1s with type 2s.

So you could use it for (straight) dating, where the types are male and
female, or mentoring/office hours where the types are mentor or mentee, or
investor or investee, or like “meet an American” where the type a is American
and type b is not, etc, etc, etc..

I also assume it tracks who has already been with who and doesn’t match them
up again as long as there are other new people left?

~~~
andrewicarlson
Thank you, that's a very interesting suggestion. I haven't heard that one yet.
I like the idea of putting more options behind the shuffling, it could make it
more engaging and offer focused-but-not-forced random encounters.

------
trevor-e
I tried Zoom's breakout rooms (~8 people per) for a virtual birthday party and
it didn't work well. The audio delay made it really hard to have a free-
flowing conversation which then made others feel bad when trying to step in.
IMO large video calls only work then there's a specific agenda and one person
doing most of the talking.

~~~
andrewicarlson
I couldn’t agree more! These rooms are capped at 4 people max per room, but
you can configure it to go down to as small as 2 people per room. To keep the
conversation flowing better.

------
feross
Similar to [https://virus.cafe](https://virus.cafe) (HN submission:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23408144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23408144))

------
wsinks
This is promising! Noting for later.

Has anyone seen the spatial audio only
[https://www.highfidelity.com/](https://www.highfidelity.com/) too?

I'm looking at both of these this week.

~~~
andrewicarlson
That looks really neat, thanks for sharing!

------
deejes
Amazing, this is solving the exact problem I have with zoom parties and even
large semi/ recreational work meetings. Will try at the end of week meeting
with my team. Nicely done!

~~~
andrewicarlson
Cool! I'm looking for any and all feedback when you give it a go!

------
bkanber
My own take on it: [https://zonko.chat](https://zonko.chat)

My thinking is that you should be able to control where you go and which group
you stand in.

------
jakozaur
Very interesting. I got the same idea, but execution always beats ideas :).

The key challange for your product is not technical, but go to market
strategy. How users might discover your app?

~~~
andrewicarlson
You're so right. I have a long history of building things and then struggling
to getting them to market. It's definitely a weak area for me. Right now I'm
trying to get the word out there and get as much user feedback as possible
before doing any more development – the bones are there, I just need the users
to tell me what should be better.

A potential area of opportunity is around meetups.

~~~
jakozaur
Can you e-mail me (the address is in profile)? Lets figure out how to do it.

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cryptozeus
Nice. One suggestion, put demo video on the page.

~~~
andrewicarlson
You got it!

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projektfu
Cute idea

