Snack — Have spontaneous, time-restricted video conversations.

As a remote work native, and I'm constantly seeking out products that recreate the serendipity of an office or a coworking space's culture remotely. I've tried Snack several times now, and I love it because it helps to do just that.

Hi hunters & makers! 👋 So, I am _really_ proud of this one and I am _so_ happy that I finally had a chance to develop it. 🤩Snack (http://aboutsnack.com/) solves a problem that I've dealt with _a lot_ when working remotely: feeling lonely and how to keep a sparsely distributed team engaged. Snack is just the right mix of fun, spontaneous and useful interactions that I wish every remote community had. I've been trialing it in the ODF community (https://www.beondeck.com/) and it has been 🔥🔥🔥. I am happy to finally make it available to everyone. If you just want to try it without installing, join our community https://aboutsnack.com/community, or read about the user journey https://aboutsnack.com/snack-clu... If you have an open Slack community (with no pay wall) Snack is completely free (just ping gajus@gajus.com with ProductHunt in the subject-line and I whitelist your org).

We've used Snack at The On Deck Fellowship and it's been entertaining. @kuizinas ships faster than almost anyone I've ever met and he's always building fun things.

Timely launch, @kuizinas!

Congratulations Snack on the launch!!!! ;) wohooo! Finally is here

By now Snack has been installed in Slack organizations ranging in size from 12 people to 5000, including organizations like Giphy, Monster Lab, Inc., Movable Inc, Jake's Jazz, and others. One question that I get asked a lot is what data we can see abd what do we store. The privacy policy covers all of that. https://aboutsnack.com/privacy-p... tl;dr; We don't see your messages and we only store the necessary data to make the app work (use case for each data point is explained in the privacy policy).

We at Slite were looking for something to do exactly that: a simple way to create coffee breaks in a remote context. Snack comes with a simple and cool UX (I love the soft "end of call" experience) and the ice-breakers cards are just as silly and cool as it should.

I absolutly love the idea!

This is so great! I first saw Snack on Devpost @ Global hack & already then thought this is exactly what I want → Spontaneous connections through online when I have the time! Already installed to a Slack community that we run & loving it! Just waiting for the native apps to randomly meet up with my friends? 👀

Congrats on the launch! Tried it and it looks like the right one for this period of remote working.🎉

LOVE this idea. Thanks team for building this 👏

It's great! Congrats on the launch 🏆

One question that I get asked a lot is what is the difference between Donut and Snack. Snack and Donut are both Slack bots that pair people, but thats where the similarities end. They are different in when, how and what happens after people are matched: * Donut pairs people to have planned conversations in future. Donut does not facilitate the conversation; it simply matches two people based on pre-defined rules to chat over Slack at pre-defined times. * Snack matches people to have serendipitous conversations _now_ (when they request it). We pro-actively pair people based on their current availability and interests, host the video and facilitate the conversation with ice-breakers. One is something you'd do once a week (Donut) and the other is something do multiple times a day, or whenever having a break from work (Snack). You should try both to see which one you prefer more. So far I've heard that Snack has a lot greater engagement than Donut (but then the feedback could be biased because it was by Slack orgs who ditched Donut to begin with!).

As every product maker, I appreciate feedback about your experience if you've tried it and publicity. If you can help with either, comment or email (gajus@gajus.com). The part that I haven't figured out yet is how to create viral growth loops. Once people see the app, they are pretty willing to try it. But there is nothing within the app that would encourage users to promote their use of the app outside of the Slack organization. In essence, this means that app's growth depends on word of mouth and discoverability through Slack directory. On the bright side, both of these channels are proving to be pretty effective.

Loads of folks during testing asked me about the technical stack used to build this. It is all Node.js + PostgreSQL + Twilio. I didn't use any framework for Slack bot (I've learned about https://slack.dev/bolt only _after_ I've built this). The only major frameworks are express.js and Slonik. Everything else is vanilla.

This is really cool! A great way to re-introduce spontaneous conversation. Been thinking a lot about this lately, but solved it in a very different way.

It looks great and I like it!

Great idea! It's similar to Donut, which my team likes to use, but feels like a lower commitment which is great. I miss the spontaneous conversations we would have in an office

Sounds like a cool app. Is it only for internal organizations or can it be set up for other networks?

?makers do you have any plans to integrate this with Google Chat?