The internet today, is boring (Social Media walled gardens)

CrossTalk — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 18:25:15 +0000

Like many Millennials, I too saw the internet grow. From Facebook & GTalk Chat to the ever-so-often "Twitter is over capacity" page

The internet back then, was FUN! A literal wild west, a no-man's land, each website a new adventure waiting to happen.

The companies that invented Social Media back then, have today trapped us in walled gardens as they prioritise user retention through curated content, restricted APIs, and proprietary algorithms.

Reddit was fun, for a while, until it too went down the path paved by its predecessors.
Forums I used to visit, disappeared one by one. People whom I knew for years just by their obscure @username and our shared fondness of Mecha, gone. And with such websites closing, so did the chance of having these sort of random encounters.

Say Hello to CrossTalk Audience Engagement Platform

Frustrated, in my free time, I created CrossTalk. An Audience Engagement Platform that, if existed, I'd be a happy user of.
But since it did not, I created it myself 😤

CrossTalk lets you embed Live Chat on your website, so everyone who's on the same Page, can talk to each other without leaving your website.

It gives your audience a sense of Community, as they see same usernames frequently and join the discussion. Even if they just stay to read, a community is eventually nurtured and grows.

This community is unique to your website, if the same users go to a different website, they might see different users talking about different content and hence a different relationship and community grows there too.

What does it mean for you?

As a website owner, building a community means even if your content is similar to competition, audience will frequent back to your website and spend a lot longer talking to others or just reading

Your Average Time per User, Ad Revenue and User Retention greatly increases while User Bounce decreases

Still in-the-works, so fellow fun-internet-enjoyers, how else can I make it fun?

As I mentioned above, CrossTalk is a 1-man-show, I made wearing 3 hats:

From the perspective of a User who engages with the Community
From the perspective of a Website owner who embeds it
From the perspective of a business that needs to make money

Hence, along with Active Engagement like Live Chat, Reddit-like Comment Threads are available too

With "Page Reactions", upvotes-downvotes, replies, emoji reactions, and honestly anything I thought "oh it'd be great if such a feature existed"

Though, I'm sure there's perspectives and engagements I haven't thought of. Or User hiccups that y'all can think of

So if you want something more from it, let me know and I'll be more than glad to make CrossTalk even more fun~

How do I get started?

CrossTalk is free! And will forever be (at least the simple features that won't hog down my Server Storage)
Paid plans exist with Image Replies and Image Chat, but right now, it's all free! So you can test it out and see if you fancy it

A quick start would be to Register for CrossTalk Dashboard, create a Web Property, embed the code and bam! It's live (No, I don't ask for credit card info)

For those who're sceptical, you can use below mentioned code snippets to test it out on any webpage, with no restrictions!
It's a public demo Web Property so you might get conflicting pages and audience, so ideally it shouldn't be used in Production

Sample Code for embedding Live Chat on your website for free:

<script src="https://widgets.crosstalk.cc/crosstalk_livechat.js"></script> <script type="application/javascript"> const ct_chat_settings = { wp: "crosstalkDemo", pageIDs: [{ title: "Home Page", pageID: "home", collapsed: false }, { title: "Other Page", pageID: "other_page", collapsed: true }], theme: "light" } crossTalkChatInit(ct_chat_settings); </script>

Similarly, Sample Code for embedding Comments on your website for free:

<div id="crosstalkCommentsHolder"></div> <script src="https://widgets.crosstalk.cc/crosstalk_comments.js"></script> <script type="application/javascript"> const ct_comments_settings = { wp: "crosstalkDemo", pageID: "home", theme: "light" } crossTalkCommentsInit(ct_comments_settings); window.addEventListener('message', (e) => { if (e.origin.includes('crosstalk.cc')) { try { const msg = JSON.parse(e.data+''); if(msg.csize) document.getElementById("ctcommentsiframe").style.height =${msg.csize}px; } catch{} } }); </script>

You can read about these in CrossTalk Documentation, but know that it's still a work in progress as I add more and more pages for Auto Moderation, Manual Moderation, General Settings, Audience Management etc etc

I hope you enjoy and use CrossTalk, so people can have fun on the internet again~

PS: Say hello to me at hello@crosstalk.cc, or on Twitter, or VK

DEV Community: CrossTalk

The internet today, is boring (Social Media walled gardens)

Say Hello to CrossTalk Audience Engagement Platform

What does it mean for you?

Still in-the-works, so fellow fun-internet-enjoyers, how else can I make it fun?

How do I get started?