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How do you start a group chat in Google Talk?

I want to talk to people in real time. With text. On the internet.

  • I'm a fan of the text chat. I used to be active on local dial-up systems, and later IRC. Then somewhere along the line, about two decades ago, I pretty much quit all of that and got caught up in real life. Well, I want to go back. Only it seems like all the people I'd want to talk to online are gone. Basically http://ask.metafilter.com/13951/Recommend-places-for-intelligent-laidback-online-chat but add ten years. I've tried various things on various websites. None of them worked out. There have been one or two interesting conversations but the signal to noise is always too low. Is there a secret text chat website I don't know about? Or do people just not real-time group text chat anymore? Or do they just stick to their smartphones and hold 11 independent one-on-one conversations? Should I just start my own?

  • Answer:

    I belong to a few different Slack teams (for Producthunt, for a local volunteering org, and for a bunch of developer-specific topics) and they have filled that gap for me. Perhaps you'll find a community on http://www.chitchats.co/, a directory of Slack groups?

ostranenie at Ask.Metafilter.Com Visit the source

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I've found some interesting folks to talk with through various open source projects. A lot of the larger ones have https://slack.com/ channels. Mostly technical, but not exclusively -- especially on projects that have tendrils into other places (http://www.commonaccord.org/). Just found this, too -- http://chats.directory/

elioat

My suspicion is that you'll have more success if you pick a specific online community and then go looking for a chat room that serves that community.

deathpanels

I used to hang out in chatrooms a lot - they don't exist anymore - and Twitter has filled that gap for me. You can have group DMs (direct messages). But - you pretty much already have to know people on there, you can't just find random people to chat with. Almost all the people I talk to on Twitter are from mefi or they're people I know in real life. (Often both at once!)

desjardins

IRC is still definitely a thing. Join a bunch of channels dedicated to subjects you're interested in. I usually find the places that have some sort of fig-leaf topic are the best at enduring rather than a general "hey let's chat on the Internet" thing.

ODiV

I like to hang out on a few channels in https://freenode.net/. Even though there's less traffic there than on https://www.esper.net/, the signal/noise ratio is much more tolerable.

surazal

What about http://www.metafilter.com/chat/? Have you looked into IRC? There seem to be some technical communities, not sure if there is a crowd matching your interests. Try a http://www.moo.mud.org/?

sammyo

Chat.metafilter.com is interesting but seems pretty much abandoned. Is there anything available on the web without installing more software?

ostranenie

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireChat was popular last year - maybe you could check it out? I'm with you on this, it's an internet thing I love, and it's harder to find as the years pass. MeFi Chat isn't abandoned though - I drop in maybe once or twice a month, and oneswellfoop above is like always in there + other regulars.

oceanjesse

Also - the "lobby" room in Cryptocat is generally occupied. A lot of chatting depends on who you want to talk to. Soulseek chat rooms can be good if you're trying to find some new ambient music recs for example.

oceanjesse

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