Lobby · B2C · drop-in video hangout app
Add a group photo countdown to video calls that people share to Stories
Credited with more sharing and pulling in left-out friends; #1 in UK, Italy, Germany 3 months later
Workedproduct-viralityretention
What they did
'Group Picture' inside Lobby's video hangouts: anyone presses a button, everyone sees a 3-2-1 countdown and their phone vibrates, and the app captures a boomerang of the whole group. The output is watermarked and gets shared to Snapchat and Instagram Stories. The button lights up every 5-10 minutes to hint it's time for a picture, and leaving a chat prompts a goodbye picture. It must be a shared moment everyone knows is coming (posing, silly faces), not a secret screenshot. Two effects: more sharing out, and friends who weren't in the hangout feel left out and join next time.
What happened
Part of a push on invite and sharing features that raised network density; Lobby hit #1 in the UK, Italy and Germany about 3 months later.
- Stage
- growth
This shipped together with other changes, so the result can't be credited to this alone.
“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?”
“I 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.”
“we do have this um feature where when you exit a chat, you're prompted to uh take a picture.”
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