The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20060424122728/http://conversate.org:80/

Conversate lets you create instant online discussion spaces. It's simpler, faster, more polite, and less annoying than group emails.

Start Fast

Conversate gives you your own online discussion space for any topic, with anyone you want to invite. It's totally free and ideal for talking about articles or websites and for organizing projects and events. Here's how to get started:


1. Create an account - On the right sidebar, enter your email address and pick a password. It's that easy.


2. Start a Conversation - Click the Start a New Conversation button. Fill in any info you want and enter friends' email in your People List. Next time you can just check off their names to invite.


3. Invite More People - You can always invite more people to the conversation and conversations can be totally private, totally public, or somewhere in between. Whatever works for you.


4. Use the bookmarklet - See the box below for the fastest way to get into a conversation. You really have to try it to see what makes it great.


 

Get Faster

Conversate is the fastest way to get a conversation started about anything on the web. Want to talk about a website, blog post, article, or image? Drag this bookmarklet to your bookmark bar:

Conversate!

When you're on an interesting webpage, click it. The website title and link will come with you and you'll be able to invite a group of friends to a group discussion in less than 10 seconds. Seriously. And it's not just about speed: Conversate conversations are easier to read and use than group emails.


Thanks for the Feedback

Thanks to everyone who sent us feedback on the beta of Conversate: features you'd like to see, bug reports, what you're using it for. We'll be adding features to Conversate on a rolling basis based on your feedback -- check back soon for a rotating list of new features and tips. Thanks again to everyone who took the time to let us know how to make Conversate a more useful tool.



Try It Now

Try inviting friends to a conversation, no login needed. If you're intrigued, create an account, it's free-- you'll get buddy lists and more options.


Start The Conversation
 

*We won't share email addresses with anyone for any reason (privacy policy).
**Really, you don't even need to enter any emails. Just click start and talk to yourself. If you think it's cool (or if you get lonely) you can always invite more people.


Features

  • A people list means you enter e-mail addresses just once, then just check people off to invite them.
  • Make lists of friends and invite the whole soccer team with one click.
  • Nested conversations make group discussions work better than group emails.
  • Use RSS to receive invitations and track conversations.
  • Enter an image URL and everyone can see the picture while they discuss it.

Why Conversate?

Forget the small talk
You and your friends and family need a simple way to talk together, but group emails can get tedious. Conversate gives you an instant discussion space for any article, picture, song, video, website, or pretty much anything. Make social plans. Collaborate on projects. And for your business or organization, Conversate can be an ongoing chat room that doesn't require your constant attention.
More polite than email
With instant discussion spaces, your friends can stay in touch without any of the stress and mess of e-mail. Your friends can follow conversations on the Conversate webpage, or to get the real essence of Conversate, subscribe to an RSS feed that alerts them to new messages. Or if they prefer the old-fashioned way, they can choose to be alerted to new messages on Conversate over e-mail. Mass e-mails are a megaphone. Conversate is an invitation.
Will never clog your inbox
If your friends are using Conversate, your valuable INBOX will never get clogged. Why? Because you get a single invitation to each new conversation. Keep all your conversations in one place, so you don't have to worry about missing e-mails. Plus you can choose to receive invitations via RSS instead. Pretty soon you'll even be able to receive invitations on AIM or Jabber.
Group emails are a dead end. Conversate's not.
So you e-mailed that groundbreaking, jaw-dropping, life-changing article to everybody you know. Now what? If your friends write back to everybody, the emails grow exponentially until somebody gets mad because their mailbox is clogged. But if they just write back to you, then that's not much of a discussion, is it? Either way you do it, mass e-mails are just a dead end. With Conversate, everyone who's inspired to can have a conversation, but nobody else has to.
Power Users: Get the Conversate Bookmarklet
Drag the Conversate bookmark (see sidebar) to the bookmark toolbar of your web browser, and starting conversations gets even easier. When you're online and see something you want to talk about, just click your Conversate bookmark and Conversate will automatically set up a conversation with a link to that website. Choose who you want to invite and off you go. That's literally three clicks to a better conversation, and ten times faster than sending an email.
A blog for the rest of us
If you don't have the time or consistency to have a real blog (or think they're a little narcissistic), you can still post occasional thoughts for your friends to read and respond. When you have something exciting or important to talk about, start a conversation. If you send people to the URL of your public conversations, pow! you've practically got a blog.
Conversations can be public or private
Actually, it's even cooler than that. Conversations can be "public" (listed on conversate.org), "open" (anyone with the URL can participate), "friend of friend" (anybody invited can invite others), or "private" (only the people you invite get access). That's just one of the ways you can customize Conversate to make it easy to stay in touch.

Other Projects We're Working On

The Conversate crew is also working on a few other projects that you might be interested in:

Participatory Culture Foundation is building an open-source platform for publishing and watching video online.

The Regular is a slashdot-style politics news site. Try our RSS Feed.

Participatory Politics is a homebase for projects that are focused on giving people new ways to engage with the political system.

Downhill Battle fights for a better music industry.