My video chat app/feature idea

So in these...uhh strange unique extraordinary distancing times people are talking to each other over videochat a lot more. Not just person to person but people to groups groups to groups, a virtual version of a physical get-together.

The problem with group chats versus irl hangouts apart from the obvious is that you can only have one conversation, the overall 'large' conversation going on. That never happens in real life. No one's always in the same conversation, you always have it in the background while you're talking to someone next to you, even across you and there's multiple of those side conversations happening at every time while the larger conversation goes on.

My idea fixes that.

You have a videochat going on with 20 people, say. You want to start a 'sidechat'. You select the folks in the groupchat, and create a group. They accept your invitation, and now you're involved in a 'sidechat'. You get the same old video feed, but two audiofeeds now: the general one, and the sidechat feed. The general feed's volume is diminished to say 20% (configurable with sensible default value), while your new chat's 100% the original volume. That way you can still hear what's going on with the group while having side conversations. Your volume's greatly diminished in the general chat, possibly muted (needs real-life testing).

You can easily switch to the general chat by using some 'go to general chat' button.

The general chat also has a 'shout' button, that temporarily takes the general audio feed's volume to 100%, and it's PTT (push-to-talk). That way if someone wants to talk to your or nudge your while you're talking to someone else, they can get to you in full volume.

Not to uhh toot my own horn but I think it's a great idea and ones everyone starts using it it'll be strange to not have it in a video chat app.

Just need to implement it.

Tried looking into the open-source videochat app jitsi to make modifications to it, but it's uhh an open-source project so no architecture diagrams, limited onboarding material, no proper documentation on the callgraph etc. Maybe I'll give it a look this weekend. Might make sense to just start from scratch and code up a crappy version first, and inspire folks to copy it.

If no one's thought of it before (and that's a big if, specially because I've not googled the idea yet), it might be worth patenting too. Obviously wouldn't want to enforce the patent, but my company gives $2500 for patents so something to consider.

Note after some research: shindig (enterprise chat) does this, albeit in a slightly different way. Zoom does something similar but in a crappy and enterprisey way. Wish everyone did this, sigh.