Monday, February 20, 2012

Converse about any topic with people from around the world at LetsTalkAbout

Converse about any topic with people from around the world at LetsTalkAbout:

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Letstalkabout.com is a fairly new website that lets you begin or participate in conversations on any topic with people you invite or even random strangers. The conversations are in real-time chat, as opposed to the slower method of posting content the way some other sites, like Subjot, do. You can attach a URL to your topic if you like, and you can connect the conversation to your Facebook account as well.


There are absolutely hundreds of websites out there built on the concept of having conversations with strangers. Sites like Omegle, Subjot and others have brought the concept of ‘casual topics’ to the forefront of the public eye. Every site out there has something unique or special about it that is their claim to fame and the reason they offer to use their site instead of another. LetsTalkAbout offers you the ability to begin a conversation on any topic at all, link a URL to it, and invite friends or even strangers to participate in the conversation. The difference with LetsTalkAbout, specifically, is that the conversations they offer are in real-time chat instead of post format. This means that you’ll be talking to live people from the first moment, instead of posting your topic or opinion and then waiting as long as it takes to get an answer back.


When you first log in to Letstalkabout.com (LTA) you’ll be presented with a pretty simple, clean page with just a few things on it. There’s a bar to click that will connect your Facebook account (if you so desire) so that you don’t have to create a separate account for LTA. You’ll also see a link to a short video that will explain what LTA is all about and how it works, step by step, so you can see it before you actually try it yourself. Below those bars, you’ll find a list of the conversations that are going right now.


Each conversation that is currently going will have a topic bar on the main page. Beside that bar you’ll see thumbnail photos of people involved in that conversation. You can click on any thumbnail and be taken to a connected page that will give you a fairly standard chat window. On the left you’ll see the list of people you’re currently in conversations with and on the right is the window where you’ll chat with those particular people in a real-time environment. You can take part in as many topics as you want, with the only limit being how much data your brain can process at one time. You can add yourself to any number of topics on the main page and people can then contact you by clicking on your thumbnail. Essentially, this means you can be in 200 topics at once if you really want to. I’m guessing you’d be hard pressed to have any kind of meaningful dialogue that way, but it is an option.


In addition to joining other people in their conversations, you can also choose to start your own topic. The process is essentially the same as adding yourself to any other topic already on the board, with the difference that you will create the actual subject that people will converse on. Whatever is on your mind at any given moment, you can add it as a topic to the list and other users can then send you chats about it. Whether it’s an opinion or a joke or a serious diatribe, the limits are up to you. On each chat window you will have a list of people you’re chatting with as well as a button to take you back to the list of open topics at the moment. Every time you get a chat message in any conversation you’re a part of, you’ll hear a bell to let you know.


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Personally, I found it to be loads of fun bouncing around different topics and talking with so many different people from so many different places. The site is still fairly new, as mentioned, so you may be one of those who winds up pushing this bit of social-ware into the public eye. While I was there, I had no trouble finding anyone to talk to, as opposed to those ‘dead’ chat sites that have nothing but crickets chirping on their pages. The developers have put some hard work into this site and I can see possibilities for it to become a very wide-spread and useful page. Remember, even huge sites like Facebook started small, and since LTA has the option to connect directly to your Facebook account, they already have a head start. I found LTA to actually be a nice alternative to the built in chat bar on Facebook, with the only caveat being the fact that you would need to invite your friends to the site for the first time.


All in all, I found LetsTalkAbout to be a great little site with a bright future. Give it a try, start a topic and give it some time to develop. While I was on it, I wound up chatting with a 56 year old housewife, a 40 year old physicist and a 22 year old soccer fanatic. There’s literally no limit to the people and topics you can find or start on LTA. Until next time, my friends.


Visit Letstalkabout.com.


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