snapTalker FAQ

What is snapTalker?
snapTalker lets you have ongoing online conversations with one, two, ten, a hundred or a thousand of your closest friends or total strangers. It's not chat...you can come and go whenever you want...read back...and pick up the conversation wherever you were. You can search for conversations about topics that interest you, and you can create your own conversations.

Do I need anything special to use it?
All you need is a web browser that's connected to the internet. There is nothing to download or install. Just go to http://snapTalker.com, and click on an interesting conversation. If you want to participate, sign up for a free account, and TALK!

How is snapTalker different than Chat?
Chat is designed for instant gratification. You talk. You read. Most chat services don't save the conversation, and even if they do, going back and catching up or searching for specific stuff in a conversation is difficult or impossible. snapTalker is designed more to let you maintain an ongoing conversation over a period of time. You can use it in real time to talk to people, but you can also easily walk away from the conversation, then come back later and pick up where you left off. Also, chat tends to be very free form. snapTalker tries to frame your conversations around a chosen topic, and lets people create thousands of topics. That's pretty hard to do in chat unless you had thousands of chatrooms.

How is snapTalker different than a discussion forum?
Discussion forums tend to be designed around the "thread" model. You have topics...then create "threads" under a topic...then add "posts" to those threads. Some discussion forums can get pretty complex with the threading model, and holding an ongoing conversation that may stray from the initial topic is difficult and often discouraged. On snapTalker you create a "conversation"...then proceed to talk in a linear stream of conciousness. The conversation just flows along as people contribute. It may stray, or it may evolve into something totally unrelated to the initial topic. That's part of the fun...to see where it goes. Just like in person...you never really know where a conversation will lead you.

Isn't this kind of like Twitter?
Not really. Twitter is mostly a way for you to broadcast your short thoughts to those that follow you. It's not all that easy to hold an actual ongoing conversation that's open to anyone who wants to join in. snapTalker was designed to make it easy to hold those conversations. It's very two-way, or three-way, or thousand-way.

How do I find conversations?
When you first open snapTalker.com you'll see a list of the Most Active Conversations and Newest Conversations. This is a good place to start. Just see if something interests you. Once you log in, you'll see a list of all the conversations that YOU'VE started, and also a list of conversations that you are following. For a shot in the dark...do a search for conversations about topics. Enter a keyword or two into the search box and see what comes up.

How do I start my own conversations?
Sign in and click the Star a new conversation button. You must be a snapTalker member to create conversations.

How do I get people to participate in my conversations?
When you create a conversation, it becomes available to the entire snapTalker audience. New conversations appear on the NEWEST CONVERSATION list. People can see it and join if they like your subject. And you should INVITE your friends or people you think might be interested in joining your conversation. When you create the conversation you can automatically send invitations to selected people, and you can also click the TELL SOMEONE ABOUT THIS CONVERSATION button to spread the word. Be active and invite people to come talk!

What does it mean to "follow" conversations?
This just means that you've added an interesting conversation to your FOLLOW list, making it easy to find. Since there are thousands of conversations going on all the time, this gives you a way to focus on the ones that you want to follow.

Who can see my conversations?
Everyone who visits the snapTalker.com website. This is true even if you create conversations on your own custom snapTalker page. Unless you mark a conversation as private, it can appear in the snapTalker search and on the Active and New Conversations lists at any time.

Can I make my conversation private?
Premium snapTalkers can create private conversations that only approved viewers can see or participate in. If you are a premium snapTalker, you'll have an option to make the conversation Private when you create a new one. You'll also have a tool that lets you approve or block people from accessing your conversation.

What does it mean to "boot" someone?
snapTalker conversations are self policing. If enough people participating in a conversation don't like one of the participants because maybe they are talking dirty, mean, or just being a jerk, or spamming stuff, the group can boot the person out of the conversation. Just click the "Boot" on a users post if you don't like what the person is saying. If 5 people boot a participant, their posts are removed and they won't be able to post in that conversation anymore.

What's the difference between a "Private" conversation and one you "Unpublish"?
When you create a new conversation, you can choose to Unpublish it. This means it will not appear on the conversation lists or in search results. Only people that know the conversation URL will be able to see it. This is useful if you want to have a somewhat private converstation but aren't a Premium member. Premium members can create completely "Private" conversations, which means the only people who will see them at all are people that you approve.

What do the different colors mean in the conversation lists?
Conversations in the conversation list are colorized depending on how recent someone has contributed to that conversation. Red means someone posted less than 5 minutes ago. Orange means within the last hour. Green less than 12 hours ago. Black less than 36 hours ago. And gray means someone hasn't posted for at least 36 hours (a day and a half). This makes it easy to spot active conversations.

Can I delete my posts?
You can delete your own posts. If you own the conversation (you created it), you can also delete the posts made by others. This lets you control your own conversations.

What if I forget my password?
Click the "Help" link on the sign up form. Enter either your username or the email address you used to sign up, and your password will be sent to that email address. For this reason you should make sure your email address is correct. Click the SETTINGS link to check it. If you continue to have problems, contact us using the Contact Us page and we'll try and help you.

Why can't I paste HTML into my posts?
People try and paste some pretty bizarre stuff into posts. It's too hard to control the formatting, size, and content of what people cut and paste from other sources. Without such control, it's easy to destroy the layout of the snapTalker pages. Not only that, people sometimes try and paste destructive HTML or SCRIPT or whatever. Who needs it?

an I use Videos or Images in my posts?
You can attach a video and/or a photo to a post. Click the Attachment icon next to the SAY IT button and either upload a photo from your computer, provide a URL to a photo on the internet, or enter the Video EMBED code for a video from YouTube or other video hosting service.

Can I attach documents to my posts?
Yes. Click the Attachment icon next to the SAY IT button and upload a document from your computer. A link to the document will appear below your post.

Can I use emoticons?
There are a couple dozen emoticons you can use in your conversations. Click the "emoticons" link next to the big TALK button to see their symbols.

Can I use bad language and rough talk?
For the most part the participants in a conversation police the content of the conversation. If enough people get offended by what someone is saying...the group will give that person the boot. Some conversations are rougher than others. If you don't like the tone of a conversation, find another one. Just like real life. In extreme cases a person who is consistently booted from conversations for behaving badly will be ejected from snapTalker entirely. In general, the idea is to have fun and stimulating conversations. Nothing good will come of trash talk or talking dirty. Remember...the whole world can see what you say...so behave accordingly!

What is a custom snapTalker page?
snapTalker users can create a customized snapTalker page that looks like whatever you want. They can use their own header and background graphics to make the page fit into their blogs or website, or just give it their own identity. The conversations shown on a custom page are limited to those started by the page owner or visitors. This makes it easy to basically create your own specialized "conversation den" focusing on only the topics that interest you.

Custom snapTalker pages can be extremely useful. Businesses, government entities, political campaigns, social groups, and a lot of others can use them to provide their own discussion forums...or make it work as an online help system...or use it as a feedback device...or anything else where you want to enable groups of people to exchange ideas. Got a big project? Need to share ideas? It's so fast and easy and inexpensive to set up snapTalker pages that it could really change the way you organize your discussions.

How do I contact snapTalker?
Click the Contact Us link at the bottom of every page and send us an email. We'd love to hear from you. Send us your ideas for new features, bug reports, suggestions, or thoughts.

Where is snapTalker headed?
We have a lot of ideas for features that will make it easier and more fun to hold online conversations. Keep watching as we evolve. And if you have an idea of your own...send it to us! Tell us how to make snapTalker better.