Tawkers Taps Top Talent

Tawkers.com sells itself as a place for real and meaningful discussion on the web. While that sounds really serious, they also host a suite of well-known funny names.

When a new platform rolls out, sometimes there is a hazy period where the early adopters have free reign. There is interesting new stuff being done, but there aren't enough users to hit that viral, critical mass number so the service can take off on its own power. Some providers rely on blasts of advertising or social marketing. There can be incentives for new adopters or bonuses and built-in prestige for those who jump on the bandwagon early. Tawkers.com is taking a different approach.

The website is a collection of instant message conversations, but not in the way you might think. The basic unit, a Tawk, is a permanent public conversation between two people, yes, but what makes the platform unique is the audience participation element. When two people want to "Tawk" about a topic, they'll Host an online discussion. This is only half of the screen, however. The other section is the open forum, where the audience can talk amongst themselves. If comments are particularly edifying, they can be upvoted by the community and then brought to the attention of the Hosts. If the Hosts find it relevant, they can Spotlight it, bringing it into the main conversation window, where it will be saved with the rest of the Tawk.

Tawkers' mission statement is to be a home for real and important discussion online. In living up to this ideal, and to promote the fledgeling network, they've grabbed some amazing hosts to form a resident team. There are fifteen, yes, fifteen resident Tawkers. They range from people in the Tawkers corporate structure, like VP of Business Development Jordan Birnbaum, to celebrated TV host and comedian Suzanne Whang. There are people with passions of every stripe, from reproductive rights to professional card players. There are varying degrees of everything, from political engagement to formal education, and the cross section of culture is really paying off for Tawkers.

With this kind of talent, raw and polished, at its disposal, Takwers is poised to lope through the early adopters haze with no trouble. The real first obstacle of modern branding, content, has been taken care of. With more than a dozen resident hosts putting on periodic tawks, there is nearly always something there for new users to experience. With top-notch talent, they also manage to keep the level of discourse relatively high for what amounts to an IM conversation between maybe-strangers. In political discussions, the lack of out-and-out fighting in the forum is rather amazing, actually, given the general state of the internet.

For more information on Tawkers, visit the website: www.tawkers.com

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Tags: "instant message", discussion forum, online discussion


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