Invite friends to a 1-minute video catch-up at a random minute each night

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 Chen… 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 time. You have to be online at the same second. If I miss you by one second, the app is useless. The one-minute call thing is really just uh a little game like to that we added on top of that, which is like, you know, at night um, you know, at a random minute, you know, the app is going to you're going to see like a little little bar pop up, and then you can It's like, "Hey, talk to your friends for 1 minute. Like catch up for 1 minute right now." And then you can join it, and you can you see your friends, and you go, "Ah, blah, blah, blah," and then and then 1 minute's over, the the chat just ends. The reason why we made it 1 minute is that we want to make it like super low-pressure. It's like, Joseph, I want to see you, right, but um I I don't want to I don't want to talk to you for like an hour. [laughter] Yeah, I don't want to I don't want to get stuck. Right. I don't want to yeah, I don't want to be held hostage, you know. It's like Yeah, yeah. Cuz the thing with video chat is that, you know, sometimes you you're into it, you feel like you can't leave. [laughter] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So- so the one-minute thing is like, "Hey, it's not It's not me. It's the game. You know, don't Don't blame the player. Blame the game." [laughter] You know? Yeah.

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.

Roger ChenYeah, we're definitely uh very inspired by BeReal at that point. Uh basically the the way they just like forced [sighs] uh some kind of like synchronous experience. Because if you think about it, right, like BeReal like one photo a day that sounds very um That sounds easy enough, but the reason why it worked is that um when you post that picture, you get a whole lot picture back at the same time. You know, that's a magic moment. I- if it If the pictures just like trickle in throughout the day, not sure it would have like taken off.

Joseph ChoiSo what's next? You hit number one with Bro on the App Store, you did Lobby, you you're figuring out all these like human psychology like social uh hijacking things, like is it this all leading up to like a grand idea in consumer social?