Pinned messages, chat subscriptions, and unmoderated chats are now available with JotCast
Hi JotCasters,
We hope everyone is staying safe and healthy in these challenging times. Here at JotCast, we’ve been working (from home, of course) to create features that will make your chats even better. We’re now very excited to share that we’ve unveiled three new features: Pinned messages, Chat Subscriptions, and an Unmoderated Chat option. Details below!
1) Pinned messages
The point of JotCast is to allow you control of the conversation (sound familiar?). We want to make it easy for you to convey the information that your readers need to know. Since it’s possible -- and, in fact, likely -- that readers will enter and leave chats throughout the discussion, if there’s important information that you want every reader to see, a pinned message is a great tool to ensure this. Moreover, the pinned message can be closed by readers after they’ve read it so that it doesn’t become distracting. If a reader closes a pinned message and then a moderator creates another one, it will reopen. This way, nobody misses vital messages *and* nobody is stuck staring at a message they no longer need.
2) Chat Subscriptions
Fret not, JotCasters. We are still a contract-free service. The subscription option is a simple way to help increase traffic to your chats. Readers can choose to subscribe to any chats hosted by a specific moderator. With this new feature, regular readers can opt in to receive email reminders 15 minutes before a chat owned by that moderator begins. Now, readers won’t worry about missing and / or forgetting about a chat they wanted to participate in.
3) Unmoderated chats
“But,” we hear you wondering, “isn’t JotCast specifically a moderated chat service?” First, moderated chats are still available. We’re simply offering the option to directly publish messages from all readers -- not just those with “trustee” status. Moderators can turn this option on and off as they please. Moderators can allow a period of time for readers to talk among themselves if they need a break, or if someone’s looking to start a chat but doesn’t want to moderate everyone’s messages, they don’t have to. The way we see it, more options are always a good thing.
So, there you have it. Three new enhancements for you to use -- or not, it’s your choice! As always, we want to hear how your experience with JotCast is going. Are there features you need or questions you have? Let us know! Until then, we’ll be working (from a socially safe distance) to make JotCast the best it can be.
