I created a pet project to see if it is of use and interesting to people. The idea is on-demand real-time chat rooms for trending topics and for personal use. You can go to the main page at www.urshoutbox.com to create your own room then share it across your social networks/email, etc.

I created a hacker news specific "shoutbox" at http://www.urshoutbox.com/bLmYAL/hacker-news . If nobody is in there, please be patient and (I hope) people will join soon to start talking.

The idea is to have trending topics on facebook/twitter/etc and have chat rooms to get people discussing in real time. The idea came from looking at popular blogs and news sites which have comment sections where people are posting so quickly trying to have what appears to be almost real-time conversations in a limited way. This is meant to get those conversations in a more real-time appropriate environment.

Think of it as irc but for today's clients. I'm surprised that there wasn't really similar options out there. Most of today's chat tools are either mobile only, require video, or limit the number of participants. If you know of competitors in this space and I'm just an idiot for not finding them, please let me know.

I look forward to hearing people's thoughts.