Banterly allows you to have real time group chats using Twitter hashtags as topics. There's something special about real time conversations that's getting lost in our asynchronous world.
We aspired to solve the issues plaguing real time group conversations online:
The ghost town problem. It's not uncommon to come across a chat room with a topic that interests you but that is completely deserted. Banterly uses Twitter to help solve this problem since someone is probably tweeting about something that you want to talk about at any given time. Banterly makes it easy to invite these people (whether you know them or not) into a chat. A solid notification system could help with this problem as well.
The boom town problem. Some chat rooms are so packed with people that it is impossible to keep up with the conversation. To address this issue, we wanted to make it really, really easy to start a new related conversation and draw a subsection of the participants with you.
The context problem. If you enter a conversation mid-stream, it can be tough to know what specifically is being talked about, who the main contributors are and how the conversation has evolved. Making the conversations persistent so that users can backtrack helps. Also, allowing new comers to see highlights of the conversation as well as the reputation of participants seems like it would help as well.
The coherence problem. Online, people are either unwilling or unable to follow the standard turn taking conventions associated with face to face conversations. As a result, comments that are entered into the stream often are not in response to the most recent comment. The threading can be hard to follow. We wanted to provide tools to make it easy for users to maintain the fidelity of the thread (i.e., reply to specific comments even though they may have risen upstream, enforcing turn taking, incentivizing good behavior / punishing bad behavior, etc).
The ghost town problem. It's not uncommon to come across a chat room with a topic that interests you but that is completely deserted. Banterly uses Twitter to help solve this problem since someone is probably tweeting about something that you want to talk about at any given time. Banterly makes it easy to invite these people (whether you know them or not) into a chat. A solid notification system could help with this problem as well.
The boom town problem. Some chat rooms are so packed with people that it is impossible to keep up with the conversation. To address this issue, we wanted to make it really, really easy to start a new related conversation and draw a subsection of the participants with you.
The context problem. If you enter a conversation mid-stream, it can be tough to know what specifically is being talked about, who the main contributors are and how the conversation has evolved. Making the conversations persistent so that users can backtrack helps. Also, allowing new comers to see highlights of the conversation as well as the reputation of participants seems like it would help as well.
The coherence problem. Online, people are either unwilling or unable to follow the standard turn taking conventions associated with face to face conversations. As a result, comments that are entered into the stream often are not in response to the most recent comment. The threading can be hard to follow. We wanted to provide tools to make it easy for users to maintain the fidelity of the thread (i.e., reply to specific comments even though they may have risen upstream, enforcing turn taking, incentivizing good behavior / punishing bad behavior, etc).
Enter the #hashtag for a topic that interests you to see current discussions or to start your own discussion about that topic. Not only can you easily invite your Twitter followers to the discussion, but you can also keep your eye on people who are tweeting with the same #hashtag right within Banterly and easily invite these people as well.
You are the moderator for all discussions @yourusername; you set the description, the theme for the discussion page, whether the discussion is private or public. You also have the power to block unwanted guests from your discussion.
You are the moderator for all discussions @yourusername; you set the description, the theme for the discussion page, whether the discussion is private or public. You also have the power to block unwanted guests from your discussion.
Conversation
Notable:
Open issues:
- My favorite part about this site is that you can see people tweeting stuff related to your Banterly conversation's hashtag in the right panel. Just drag and drop the tweet into the Banterly stream. Not only will the tweet become a part of the Banterly conversation, but the original tweeter can get an @mention invite to join the Banterly conversation.
- When you're @mentioned, the comment is colored separately.
- Comment highlighted in red is "selected". Allows users to respond to it specifically.
Open issues:
- How to show which comments are threaded / how to show the thread
- The "hand raised" function is slapped on there but lots of thinking still needs to go into how to enforce (or at least incentivize) turn taking. For example, how much power does the moderator have in controlling the flow of comments? If you have to wait turns, can you have a bunch of comments queued up (like comment "drafts")? Does your profy pic light up when you are typing?
- The little pointy finger icon lets you quickly start another conversation with that comment as the first one in the new conversation (if the comment has previous comments threaded to it, they will come along for context). Every participant in the thread of this comment should get notified of the new conversation somehow. An indicator would be left on the comment showing the rest of the people in this conversation that this comment was the launch pad for a branch conversation.
Profile
Would be good to show Starred comments and @mentions.
Search
Button to create a new conversation from tweets in the right panel should show up on hover.
