Hive Hangouts is Live! Here's How to Use It

Hello Hivers!

We're excited to share something we've been building at Mantequilla-Soft: Hive Hangouts, a Twitter/X Spaces-style audio rooms app, built on Hive and fully open source.

Think of it as live audio rooms where you can host conversations, invite speakers, and interact with your audience, all authenticated with your Hive account. No new signups, no passwords. Your Hive identity is your Hangout identity.

This is an MVP (Minimum Viable Product), which means it's functional and ready to use, but we're still actively improving it based on your feedback. We want YOU to try it out and help us shape what it becomes.

Let's walk you through how it works.

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What Can You Do with Hive Hangouts?

• Host a room: Start a live audio room on any topic. Your room shows up as a Snap (Hive short-form content) on the Snapie feed, so people can discover it and join.
• Join a room: Jump into any active room as a listener. If you want to talk, raise your hand and the host can bring you to the stage.
• Chat: There's a text chat inside each room. Note: the chat is ephemeral, it disappears when you leave the room and there is no history.
• Record and publish: Hosts can record the audio of a Hangout and then publish it as a long-form blog post on Hive through the Snapie composer. The post goes to the Snapie community.
• Earn rewards: Since rooms are created as Snaps on Hive, they can receive upvotes just like any other content. The posts created from recordings can also be upvoted.

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Before You Start

Here's what you need:

1. A Hive account (if you're reading this, you probably already have one).
2. Hive Keychain installed. This is the only login method available right now.
   • On desktop: Install the Hive Keychain browser extension.
   • On mobile: Download the Hive Keychain mobile app and use its built-in browser to navigate to Snapie.io.
3. A microphone on your device. The app will ask for permission to use it when you join or create a room.

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Step-by-Step: Getting Started

1. Go to Snapie

Open your browser and go to snapie.io. You can also go directly to snapie.io/hangouts to see the Hangouts section.

2. Log In with Hive Keychain

Click the login button and authenticate with Hive Keychain. You will get a Keychain popup asking you to approve the login. Approve it.

3. Authenticate on Hangouts

After logging into Snapie, when you access the Hangouts section, you'll get a second Keychain popup. This is the Hangouts backend verifying that you own your Hive account. It uses a challenge-response system with your posting key.

Expect two Keychain popups in total: one for Snapie, one for Hangouts. This is normal.

4. You're In!

Once authenticated, you can see the list of active rooms or create your own.

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How to Create a Room

1. Click the New Room button.
2. Give your room a name/topic.
3. Your room is now live! A Snap created on the Hive blockchain and appears on the Snapie feed, so other users can discover your room and join.

Pro tip: Rooms can have any topic. If you are a musician, you could host a concert, if you like telling jokes, you could do that.

You are now the host of this room. As the host, you can:

• Bring listeners to the stage: Click on a participant's profile picture and move them to the speaker stage.
• Move speakers back to the audience: If someone needs to step back, you can move them off the stage.
• Record the session: Use the record feature to capture the audio for later publishing. Note: after doing this, you will leave the room.

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How to Join a Room

There are two ways to find and join active rooms:

1. From the Snapie feed: Active Hangouts show up as Snaps. You'll see them as you scroll through the feed.
2. From the Hangouts page: Go to snapie.io/hangouts to see all currently open rooms.

Click on a room to join as a listener. From there:

• Raise your hand if you want to speak. The host can then promote you to the stage.
• Use the text chat to participate without speaking.

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Recording and Publishing Your Hangout

One of the coolest features: you can record your Hangout and turn it into a Hive post.

1. As the host, start the recording during the session (audio only for now).
2. After the session ends, you'll have the option to create a post from the recording.
3. You'll be taken to the Snapie composer where you can write your post, add context, and publish it to the Snapie community on Hive.

About beneficiaries: When a room is created, the Snap/comment has a 10% beneficiary to @snapie. When a post is published from a recording, the beneficiaries are 3% to @snapie and 7% to @threespeakfund. This supports the continued development of the platform.

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Using Hive Hangouts on Mobile

Hive Hangouts works on mobile! Here's how:

1. Open the Hive Keychain mobile app.
2. Use the built-in browser inside Keychain (not your regular phone browser).
3. Navigate to snapie.io or snapie.io/hangouts.
4. Log in and authenticate as described above.

Note: The text chat inside rooms is not working perfectly on mobile yet. Audio works fine, though, and we're working on fixing the mobile chat experience.

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Known Limitations (It's an MVP!)

We want to be upfront about where things stand. This is an early release, and we're improving it every week:

• Login: Only Hive Keychain is supported for now. More login methods are on our roadmap.
• Chat on mobile: The in-room text chat has some issues on mobile devices. We're working on it.
• Chat history: The text chat is ephemeral. If you leave and come back, the previous messages are gone.
• Room capacity: We haven't hit the ceiling yet, and we're actively testing. If you experience lag in a large room, let us know!
• Publishing: Recorded posts currently go to the Snapie community only. Community selection is coming in a future update.
• Notifications: When a host moves you to the stage, there's no notification yet. Keep an eye on the room UI.

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It's Open Source!

Hive Hangouts is fully open source, built with LiveKit (an open-source WebRTC server), Fastify, and React. You can check out the code, open issues, or contribute:

GitHub: github.com/Mantequilla-Soft/hangouts

Documentation: hangout.3speak.tv/docs

The architecture is straightforward: a React frontend connects to a self-hosted LiveKit server for real-time audio, with a thin Fastify API handling Hive authentication and LiveKit token generation.

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We Want Your Feedback!

This is an MVP, and your feedback is what drives our development. Try it out, host a room, join a conversation, break things, and tell us about it.

You can:

• Leave a comment on this post with your experience
• Open an issue on the GitHub repo
• Find us on the Snapie feed

We're planning open testing sessions where anyone can jump in and help us stress-test the platform. Keep an eye on this account for announcements!

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Hive Hangouts is another step towards making Hive the go-to place for decentralized social interaction. Let's build this together.

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Join our Discord Communities:

3Speak • Snapie • Proyecto Aliento

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Support our Witnesses:

Threespeak • Snapie • Aliento

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https://www.mantequilla-soft.com/

https://github.com/orgs/Mantequilla-Soft/repositories