We believe that chat’s great benefit is to be live. Real-time. You really talk to some real person somewhere around the world.

But chat’s biggest drawback is volatility. What you say is then lost forever…

So, we think it can be a good idea to keep track of some conversations. And Twitter, with its worldwide success, is a perfect tool for that. In order to test this idea, and make sure that it makes sense, we have created a few Twitter accounts where anyone can follow what is being said. Among them:

• My room: xavier_YR
• JVS’s room: jvs_YR
• The walksite Yoowalk (at the entry corner): Yoowalk_YW

When we thought we had sorted out most of the bugs, and it could be interesting for some users, we asked Derringer if he was interested, and then created his account: Derringer_YR

At her request, we also created an account for Candyland, one of Cad Berry/ Fantasychick’s rooms: cadberry_YR

It is still a test that we are making, both technical and in terms of use.

Follow these Twitter accounts, chat around in these Yoowalk rooms, then tell us what you think, here on this blog.

Would you also like a Twitter account for your room? Shall we add other information than chat, for example who visited your room, and when?

I’ll be reading and answering comments.

Xavier

Today is the day of a great new release of Yoowalk:

the top menu and management of all html pages has been deeply improved. We hope this will help you browse the profile, room editor, and friends pages a lot more.

Top menu Yoowalk

the share menu has also been totally redesigned. Enjoy now the possibility to share any place and any walksite or personal room of Yoowalk by a simple click with your friends per email, Facebook, Myspace, Digg, Delicious, Stumbleupon, Technorati, …
Once you have built your personal room or your own walksite, share it on other websites so that you can start building your audience!

Share Yoowalk

We are continuously improving Yoowalk. Please do not hesitate to suggest improvements to us using the contact form on yoowalk.com.

- You can now in 1 click share any place of Yoowalk with your friends, thanks to our new Share menu. A party to organize in your room? A news you want to debate with your community? A funny video you want to share with your friends? Simply click on the Share menu and:

• Post a link directly on your profile in Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, Live Spaces, etc. When your community of friends click on it, they will jump directly to this place in Yoowalk
• Send emails to your contacts – actually, Yoowalk sends them for you. They will receive a short email with a link that will transport them directly to this place in Yoowalk
• Copy a permalink to this place. You can then paste it into an email or instant message to invite somebody, or archive it and use it as a favorite, etc. This permalink will jump any person who clicks on it directly to this place in Yoowalk.

Yoowalk: screenshot on the Share button of the toolbar

- The name of the streets are now visible on the ground. This will help when strolling down the streets of Yoowalk.

- We also improved the graphical user interface. Clearer and more homogenous windows, nicer buttons, new icons. We are in the process of improving the quality of what you see and the number of options offered to you. We are not finished yet, and you will see in the coming weeks regular improvements of the GUI. We will tell you when we are over on this and can declare Yoowalk Beta v1.2 open…

Do not hesitate to comment on this article to give us your feedback about these new features.