Chatting at the moment, seems like a nice and useful tool. There are some problems (people not being able to speak by default before being followed by the channel creator), which I've already reported to the developer.

For me (been IRCing for 15yrs), this is different from both ad-hoc webchats and IRC. It's better integrated into Twitter experience than your typical webchat. If you're a Twitter user and would like chat-like capability, you don't need to register, invite your followers over, etc (technically, you do need to do all of that, but it uses Twitter auth & profiles, so it's like an extension of twitter).

On that point, maybe it'd be great to provide plugins/scripts for other clients (see Embedly's Parrotfish) to instantly create & invite someone to a room from inside your Twitter (the official web, or some other) client; ie. a shortcut for creating the room and copypasting the url.

EDIT: I don't think it'd ever be a replacement for IRC, but neither do I think it should. I like the "IRC for Twitter" niche (how about "IRC for Facebook?").

Chat is already built in Facebook.

Group chat? I haven't seen that feature (OTOH I don't use Facebook chat so I might've missed it).

I was wondering when something like this would be released. Well at least in an easy to use way that supports the Twitter ecosystem. I remember having long active discussions in #gamedesign and we found out how Twitter was not built for any type of real conversation.

Why not just make a great irc like webapp? Logged/searchable

I've used this before and can highly recommend it. It has seamless Twitter integration, and took no time to get setup.

I was participating in a Twitter exchange and one of the participants suggested we use Nurph to carry on the conversation. We were discussing a TechCrunch article about bootstapping startups, and at one point the Editor of TC Europe joined the chat.

It is a great idea, would like to see more people using it.

I use Nurph. We have a regular Friday afternoon start-ups discussion slot. Last Friday we discussed the idea of a "Get a room" service -- I believe it had come up before. In other words, when a twitter exchange gets too detailed for 140 chars, multiple folk, and filling your stream, you can switch to Nurph.

It's a great tool. Might really catch on with a bit more traction. Could work nicely with HN too.

I like the idea but in order to succeed you need integration through the Twitter distribution system -- this needs to be part of TweetDeck, my Android app, etc (those are just the desktop / mobile clients I use, it needs to be in all of them)... I don't like it enough to want to have a browser tab open to maintain it.

May I try to reframe your excellent suggestion?

I like the idea.

In order to take this to the next level, you need integration through the Twitter distribution system -- this needs to be part of TweetDeck, my Android app, etc (those are just the desktop / mobile clients I use, it needs to be in all of them)...

Great concept, but is it good enough enough that users will want to have a browser tab open to maintain it?

So this boils down to a classic chatroom, but with Twitter login and integration.

BTW, I clicked the 'login' button, authenticated, and got the text below. After going back to nurph.com, I am logged in and it seems to be okay.

var NurphBarOptions = { name: 'NurphHQ', panel_type: 'link', html: '\n \n \n <\/div>\n Chat with us<\/a>\n © Nurph. 2010<\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n \n Share This:<\/li>\n Tweet It<\/a> •<\/li>\n Email<\/a> •<\/li>\n Facebook<\/a>

Sorry about that, we're working on it. In the meantime you can work around it by refreshing the page or re-visiting http://Nurph.com

The last time I saw some real time chat app made by an HNer (Edit: http://twich.me), I suggested my followers of the possibilities of using that to reduce noise made of chatting on Twitter. No one seemed to care. People don't like go off the ease of Twitter. They just chat away. Perhaps only twitter can do something for that.

http://Nurph.com/AllStartups might be of interest to the Hacker News community (Twitter @AllStartups) - it's real-time Twitter chat for startup founders. We're chatting about the latest Apple news right now.

It seems like half the articles I read about Twitter are trying to workaround its limitations.

...and that's why there are over 300,000 Twitter applications http://twitter.com/tweetsmarter/status/26005694364778496

Also, sometimes I feel like it would be better to read Twitter in the reverse order, and with "Mark as read", just like email.

I read Twitter by going backwards, reading stuff until I read a tweet that I recall having already read.

A way to have a real time conversation with someone on the internet? What a novel concept. I guess IRC and the litany of instant messaging protocols didn't fit the need here. Hooray for re-inventing the wheel.

If it's not accessible via browser, it doesn't exist to most people.