News.
Today’s Post
Today’s Meet is quietly launched.
What is Today’s Meet? Why do we need another micro-messaging service? Why does Today’s Meet look suspiciously like Drop.io?
All questions I asked myself while building Today’s Meet, so I figure someone else might want to know, too.
What is Today’s Meet?
More and more, Twitter is being used at conferences of the social media savvy. (So much that there’s already backlash.) People tweet from the conference floor, their followers can get an overview of the conference experience. Sometimes people even tweet about the presentation or panel their watching.
It’s become so common, in fact, that people have asked for questions during the presentation to be tweeted to them, via DM, @-replies, or #hashtags.
But Twitter isn’t always appropriate for this, for a few reasons. Some people don’t want to annoy their followers with messages that don’t have their context. Most likely, everyone in the room is not following everyone else, so only the speaker will see everything. And in a lot of situations, your audience isn’t on Twitter.
Today’s Meet exists to address some of that. Your audience doesn’t need to have an account or fancy software: they just need to go to a URL you create ahead of time. (In fact, you don’t even need an account. Just go to http://todaysmeet.com/YOUR_ROOM_NAME and you can set it up.) Messages go to everyone in the room—and no one else, it’s purely opt-in.
The room, the transcript, is available until it’s not. You set an expiration date when you create the room.
And there’s a “read-only” version for presenters, projectors, or anyone else who just wants to hear everyone else.
The two features I want to address first are private rooms—rooms where you need a password to get in—and mobile support. (The Ajax-driven interface breaks on my Blackberry, very embarassing.)
So, why do we need another micro-messaging service?
Twitter has shortcomings. There are the ones I just mentioned and a few others, like trying to have a 3-way conversation where 40% of each tweet is taken up by “@joetheplumber @sarahcuda”.
In most situations, Twitter is great. In some, it’s not.
Today’s Meet also has a very low start-up cost. No accounts, no signing up, no profile to fill in, no private information to give away. For non-Twitter audiences, Today’s Meet can be a great introduction to social messaging and maybe even a stepping stone to Twitter and more.
Why does Today’s Meet look so much like Drop.io?
Frankly, I like how Drop.io looks. The UI is very clean and clear and focused on what you’re there to do.
My goal for Today’s Meet was to get a clean, clear, and focused UI. So I borrowed liberally from Drop.io. I hope they consider it a form of flattery.
I’m sure Today’s Meet will evolve and find its own path in the future. For the present, it was nice to lay out a simple design and then focus on the underlying application.
Check it out.
Head back to Today’s Meet and give it a shot.
Try talking to your audience, or having a quick conversation with a few people, or anything else. If you think of more uses, leave a comment!
And check back here for updates about the service, like new features or the API (which I want to open soon).
February 11th, 2009 at 8:20 am
is it possible to include hyperlinks witin the text eg if http://www…... is typed in the text it can be clicked on to go to the site I think here about sites and photos eg flickr etc. I am involved in education and I have been looking for a tool to collect qualitative data from respondents in a survey I thought of using twitter or face book or a blog but I wanted something simple, non threatening and as anonymous as possible I may well have found the tool in Todays meet!
February 11th, 2009 at 8:22 am
Forget the above post I realise by putting http:// in I can get the result I need self help or what
February 11th, 2009 at 9:01 am
Hey Mike,
I know the “http://” eats up a few characters (5% of a post) but since fewer and fewer URLs start with the once-ubiquitous “www”, there’s not much to do.
Identifying URLs, especially the end of the URL, is difficult, owing to the wide range of possible characters. “)” and “.” are both perfectly valid at the end of a URL, for example. So the system I have in place does a decent job, but it’s not perfect.
I recommend using a service like is.gd, twurl, or bit.ly for shortening URLs. The first one is the shortest, the second two allow you to count how many people have clicked it, if you sign in before creating the shortcut.
I don’t normally like to talk about upcoming features, but this one is pretty definite, so: expect to see some integration with one of those services, soon.
April 8th, 2009 at 10:41 am
WHat happen the other day there was no access to the site only a black screen!!!!
I thought I had lost all my entries in my room
April 10th, 2009 at 11:04 am
The database system failed to start after a routine system restart. Unfortunately, my monitoring software was only configured to track the web server (which is the only server that’s had problems) so it didn’t pick up on the problem. External monitoring also only picks up the web server.
No data was lost, anything that was not yet set to expire should still be available.