Public chats and chat improvements
We now have public chats in Skype. Yay.
What are they? In short, you could say that public chats are text chats that anyone can create, host and join. They're similar to the current private text chats and indeed, share large parts of the interface, but what public chats offer are better moderation controls, letting anyone join without being "added" and letting you have a link to a chat straight on your webpage, e-mail or any other place.
There's now a public chat for this blog too. Just see in the right sidebar. Feel free to join.
Note that public chats are currently only available in Skype 3.0 Beta for Windows. Support for other platforms is coming. You cannot join public chats with older versions of Skype for Windows.
The public chat system is pretty versatile. You can have chats with wildly different policies. You can have open watercooler chats where anyone can come and talk, or you can have pressconference-style chats with lots of listeners but few talkers, or entirely closed chats where you will approve each joiner before they can even read the messages or topic. You can remove messages and remove unwanted folks from chats.
The detailed instructions for using public chats would be far too long to type here, but we have handy user guides to take you through all that. Go to our [communities page](http://www.skype.com/share/communities.html) where you will find guides for how to [create](http://www.skype.com/help/guides/publicchat_create.html), [manage](http://www.skype.com/help/guides/publicchat_manage.html) and [promote](http://www.skype.com/help/guides/publicchat_promote.html) your chat. You'll also find the Skypecasts guides on that same page. Here are just a few notes about why public chats are interesting and what has changed in the current, private chat feature.
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serrebi2006 commented Wednesday, Nov 8
hey, skype public chats are good, will you guys ever add voice to them, somehow? Currently running skype v3.x, running great! Just not as accessible with my screenreader as 2.x, but maybe that's just my computer or something lol....
kevinrj commented Thursday, Nov 9
Hello I have to re-afirm the post by the other screen reader user. I thank the skype team for making the main skype window much more accessible than it was, but the text chat aspect of skype hasn't been improved at all. There are a significant number of skype features, both in the text chat as well as still in the main window, that have no keyboard access, this is extremely important to blind users who don't find the mouse as convenient. We need a way to navigate around in the text chat window also would be great if messages sent to the chat window were moved to a read-only edit box this would let the pc cursor move aroundand you could select and copy maybe you could press tab or shift tab to move between the message window and the typing window. features like leaving chats adding people being able to look up or add people in the chat to your list, must have keyboard equivolents. currently you can only get to these features with a mouse. A search feature in text chats would b egreat, and I'm sure sighted users would find it as helpful as blind. Please seriously consider the requests in this message.
my skype name is kevinrj
Jaanus commented Friday, Nov 10
kevinrj - thanks for your comments. I actually have info from the team that we'll be rolling out updates regarding keyboard navigation and accessibility throughout this beta period, so please stay tuned for updates.
hantms commented Friday, Nov 17
I tried to click the link on your page to join a chat, but then nothing happens. It seemed like there's a web-interface so anyone can join, or so all participants need to have Skype installed? I'd love to use this to provide support for customers, but I don't want to force them to install Skype of course.
bruce.wagner commented Thursday, Dec 14
Hello!
I am Bruce Wagner. I host a television show in New York City, and we discuss Skype a lot on the show...
On the public chat web "bottons", the link called, "More about public chats."... takes you to this page: http://www.skype.com/help/guides/publicchat_takingpart.html?
HOWEVER, THAT GUIDE DOES NOT TELL YOU HOW TO CREATE A PUBLIC CHAT at all....
IT SHOULD INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING:
To create a public chat go to Tools > Create public chat. The easy-to-use wizard will guide you through the steps and help you create links and special snippets to help you promote your chat through email or on a webpage.
I thought that it was a feature still in Beta and you could NOT yet create a public chat...
I had to do tons of searching through the knowledgebase to find out that I *CAN* create a public chat NOW....
Bruce Wagner
http://brucewagner.com
nsmjustinlong commented Wednesday, Jan 3
The problem with the public chats is that if the host leaves them for any reason, the chat is lost and the HTML code is no longer any good. So if you have a chat room on a blog, and you shut your computer off for the night, the chat is lost? You need a way for the host to "pause" or temporarily close a moderated chat room and be able to reopen it later (perhaps simply by entering it).
lisazee commented Thursday, Apr 12
Hi,
I love using Skype and the public chat feature is a great addition! What I want to know is how many public chats can one Skype user host? It seems that you can only host one public chat or attend one public chat at a time. Is this true? Does anyone know?
tanvidamani commented Sunday, Nov 30
how does one find the public chats? I wish there was the directory thing like the skypecasts had... those made it so much easier to find and talk to people...
freischwimmen commented Thursday, Aug 27
when will public chats allow newer windows version to join?