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.