I created an online chat room back in April of 2008 called Essex Meets The World. I created it after the regular chat room my friend Kath and I had been visiting closed down due to the chat owner having a disagreement with some of the members. He had himself a tantrum and removed the chat room, therefore leaving the rest of us with nowhere to go.
Marti - one of the moderators and frequent users of the previous chat room - decided to go and create herself a new chat room too and most of the original members went with her. I decided however to create something a little bit more unique - enter EMTW. Kath and I had been playing an online version of scrabble that was called scrabulous - it has since had to change it's name to lexulous for copyright reasons. We made a whole host of new friends through this wonderful community based game and therefore I wanted somewhere where I could invite those friends to come and chat.
I found a forum hosting site and then found the chat room host site and combined both to create EMTW by incorporating the chat box into the forum so people will land on the chat box the minute they visit the page. We spent months just sitting on our computers and chatting in our new haven to people from all over the world. I chose the name because Kath and I are both in Essex but we chatted to people from so many far reaches of the globe that I wanted to incorporate them into the name too. Most of our member were from the UK, USA, Canada and Australia so we really were reaching out big time.
After a while, the chat room started getting quiet and fewer people were coming in to visit on a regular occasion, therefore resulting in the majority of us becoming bored of just sitting in there, waiting for nobody to show up and talk to us. I started playing a game on Facebook called Scavenger Hunt and quickly became addicted to it. It was a very community style game, with discussion boards full of people who wanted to chat. I took the initiative and invited them to join my chat room.
The first 3 people to see my post inviting new members were Lisa from Oklahoma, USA, Kath (not the one from Essex) from Brisbane, Australia and Paula from Texas, USA. Kath, Sue (Kath's Mum) and I quickly became hooked again on our chat room and started visiting and chatting to each other again on a more regular basis, especially with our new found friends from across the globe. The six of us became very close and we chatted about pretty much anything and everything.
The chat room started getting more and more popular with Scavenger Hunt players so I promoted several people to the role of moderator to keep an eye on the people who visit and to make the newcomers feel welcome. We actually had 104 people online in the chat room all at the same time once - that's the highest number of users we've ever had online at one time. Gradually though, the chat room started fading again due to a few changes in the rules of Scavenger Hunt and people stopped coming in again on a regular basis as before. Most of them were coming in to get links for the items they needed in the game and we were happy to share with them until the rule change and the shared links were removed.
So the chat room had somewhat of a decline for a while again before eventually we set up a new routine. I became friends with the guy who created the game Scavenger Hunt and often met up in my chat room to discuss the game and possible changes or future development projects within the game. He then started advertising the chat room to his users when he was taking the game offline to do the season reset. Eventually, they started flooding back in again. This time they only came in on season reset nights to discuss the game, how their previous season went, to have guesses as to what the upcoming season would be about and to share ideas about what they think of future developments for the game, etc.
So now that I've rambled on and explained what the chat room is, the reason I explained all that is because today is the season reset and it was time to pop in and have a chat with the other users of the game. Wednesday morning, 4am and there I am, wide awake and sitting in front of my PC, chatting to random strangers from around the world.
We spent about an hour or so in there, chatting about the game and discussing the features. I made lots of newcomers members and flicked back and forth between the chat room and Facebook. Eventually, the new season had begun and we all went our seperate ways to get on with the hunt. I then went back to sleep for a few more hours and then spent the rest of the day playing my Facebook games and watching more online TV.
If anyone wants to join our lovely chat room, then please do feel free to pop along and have a nose around the site. Even if there's nobody online to chat to, there are other things there to keep your mind occupied. The address of the site is...
http://essexmeetstheworld.bigforumpro.com
James!
xXx
Marti - one of the moderators and frequent users of the previous chat room - decided to go and create herself a new chat room too and most of the original members went with her. I decided however to create something a little bit more unique - enter EMTW. Kath and I had been playing an online version of scrabble that was called scrabulous - it has since had to change it's name to lexulous for copyright reasons. We made a whole host of new friends through this wonderful community based game and therefore I wanted somewhere where I could invite those friends to come and chat.
I found a forum hosting site and then found the chat room host site and combined both to create EMTW by incorporating the chat box into the forum so people will land on the chat box the minute they visit the page. We spent months just sitting on our computers and chatting in our new haven to people from all over the world. I chose the name because Kath and I are both in Essex but we chatted to people from so many far reaches of the globe that I wanted to incorporate them into the name too. Most of our member were from the UK, USA, Canada and Australia so we really were reaching out big time.
After a while, the chat room started getting quiet and fewer people were coming in to visit on a regular occasion, therefore resulting in the majority of us becoming bored of just sitting in there, waiting for nobody to show up and talk to us. I started playing a game on Facebook called Scavenger Hunt and quickly became addicted to it. It was a very community style game, with discussion boards full of people who wanted to chat. I took the initiative and invited them to join my chat room.
The first 3 people to see my post inviting new members were Lisa from Oklahoma, USA, Kath (not the one from Essex) from Brisbane, Australia and Paula from Texas, USA. Kath, Sue (Kath's Mum) and I quickly became hooked again on our chat room and started visiting and chatting to each other again on a more regular basis, especially with our new found friends from across the globe. The six of us became very close and we chatted about pretty much anything and everything.
The chat room started getting more and more popular with Scavenger Hunt players so I promoted several people to the role of moderator to keep an eye on the people who visit and to make the newcomers feel welcome. We actually had 104 people online in the chat room all at the same time once - that's the highest number of users we've ever had online at one time. Gradually though, the chat room started fading again due to a few changes in the rules of Scavenger Hunt and people stopped coming in again on a regular basis as before. Most of them were coming in to get links for the items they needed in the game and we were happy to share with them until the rule change and the shared links were removed.
So the chat room had somewhat of a decline for a while again before eventually we set up a new routine. I became friends with the guy who created the game Scavenger Hunt and often met up in my chat room to discuss the game and possible changes or future development projects within the game. He then started advertising the chat room to his users when he was taking the game offline to do the season reset. Eventually, they started flooding back in again. This time they only came in on season reset nights to discuss the game, how their previous season went, to have guesses as to what the upcoming season would be about and to share ideas about what they think of future developments for the game, etc.
So now that I've rambled on and explained what the chat room is, the reason I explained all that is because today is the season reset and it was time to pop in and have a chat with the other users of the game. Wednesday morning, 4am and there I am, wide awake and sitting in front of my PC, chatting to random strangers from around the world.
We spent about an hour or so in there, chatting about the game and discussing the features. I made lots of newcomers members and flicked back and forth between the chat room and Facebook. Eventually, the new season had begun and we all went our seperate ways to get on with the hunt. I then went back to sleep for a few more hours and then spent the rest of the day playing my Facebook games and watching more online TV.
If anyone wants to join our lovely chat room, then please do feel free to pop along and have a nose around the site. Even if there's nobody online to chat to, there are other things there to keep your mind occupied. The address of the site is...
http://essexmeetstheworld.bigforumpro.com
James!
xXx
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