Add a group photo countdown to video calls that people share to Stories

Joseph ChoiSo then how how did this go? You got 500,000 users, daily active users on Lobby, and then what happened?

Roger Chen… Group Picture. The idea is when you hang out in real life, let's say you're hang out like in Dolores Park or something, you're just like sitting on the on on the grass, right? And uh you have nothing to talk about with your friends, and what would people start doing? They're going to start taking group pictures. [laughter] So like when you have nothing to do, people are going to start taking pictures, [laughter] and uh and when you start whip out a camera, and people get excited, again they're like, "Yay," and then and then they're going to you're going to have like something to talk about afterwards. So the the feature we made is a group picture when uh during the the video chat hangout. So it's like you you press a button, and then everyone sees on their screen like 3, 2, 1, like a countdown, and the phone vibrates, and and then you take a boomerang of a picture. Um and then people are going to share it to their like Stories, like Snapchat Stories, Instagram Stories, and that does like two things, right? Number one, it um obviously gets a lot more sharing out, right? And uh number two, the friends who are not in the hangout are going to be like, "How did this happen without me?" [laughter] And then they're going to come the next time. So, yeah, so we did a lot of wacky things to get the network density up. Uh and uh 3 months later, Lobby became number one in the UK, and then Italy, and then Germany. Oh, yeah, and then and then starting from the UK, I think like some people in the UK spread it to some some people in international schools in Cairo, Egypt. Apparently, those people are like kind of like influencers in Egypt, so when they start using it, like a lot of like young people in Egypt …

Joseph ChoiThat's one of the most insane growth hacks, like product-led viral growth um strategies I've heard of about. That's really interesting. It's like you're combining the IRL experience with the invite flow. So a lot of people do the classic stuff where it's like invite, you know, five friends and you unlock some sort of social benefit or um invite a friend and you get a discount or whatever it is, but this was literally just like it tells you to …

Joseph ChoiAnd then how did you get people to take the group picture while they were actually with people? If they're on a video chat, aren't they like sitting in their room, like on their bed, like you know, doing these one-minute video chats?

Roger ChenI think we have a rule where, you know, every like 5 or 10 minutes like the button is going to light up, you know, it's- it's going to hint that you can take the picture right now. And one key thing about like the group picture feature is that um it has to It has to be a shared experience. What I mean by that is that even right now I'm talking to you, right? I can like [laughter] I can take a screenshot, right? But that's just creepy, you know. Like that's not fun, you know. That's just like sniping you, you know. [laughter] And um what we want is that everyone needs to know a picture is going to happen, and then they get excited. So it's not about, you know, me you know taking a picture on my own, it's about everyone be like, "It's happening." And then, let's take Let's pose, let's do something like crazy, you know, like like do do some crazy faces. So that's like the very key ingredient. It has to be a fun like group activity instead of like something instead of like a secret screenshot. Uh so- so that's one. And number two is like we do have this um feature where when you exit a chat, you're prompted to uh take a picture. It's like, "Hey, guys. See ya. Picture, bye." [laughter] And uh Uh yeah, yeah. And- and the third thing is like you mentioned the uh one-minute uh video call, right? So that's actually like not the main feature, that's like a growth feature. Um so the main feature is really just like people are staying there, and then when you're free, you can drop in to chat with me. Uh and um that's the main feature. The one-minute thing is more like it's more like a roll call. So we talked about density, right? Like one thing we struggle with is, you know, with a real-time product, you don't you not only need like relationship density, you'd also need like temporal density. There is like density in …

Joseph ChoiYou need relationship density and temporal density. I guess that's like the central feature of BeReal, right? It's like one Yes. uh picture per day at a randomized time every day. But everyone does it at the same time, so everyone kind of like sees each other's stuff.