Social Glue: Celebrating TodaysMeet

Today I deleted a bookmark from my browser that has been there since the fall of 2013. It looked like this:

This was a shortcut to a (semi-)private chatroom hosted by TodaysMeet.com, which I used regularly from 2013 up to the present. But TodaysMeet is no more. If you head to the site, you'll find this message:

TodaysMeet was a communication tool that allowed users to create private (or semi-private) chatrooms that anyone could join if they knew the URL. There are lots of ways such a tool could be used, and many educators used it to get students sharing their best thinking. I used it myself in both online and face-to-face courses from time to time.

The creator of this fantastic tool, James Socol, shared a bit about the reason for shutting down in his blog post Remembering Today's Meet. The short version: TodaysMeet was a one-man show, a side-gig. And it was becoming too much to keep up with it all. I also wonder if the new GDPR privacy rules from the EU had something to do with it? (I suspect you've seen most of your favorite online services providing notification of some changes to their privacy policies in the past months? I'm actually a fan of this directive, even if it doesn't actually apply to us in the USA. The Wikipedia article about GDPR is a pretty good introduction to what this is all about.)

I'm truly sad that TodaysMeet is shutting down. I used it from time to time in my teaching practice, and I'm sad that this super-easy-to-use tool is no more. But even more than in my teaching, I'm sad that TodaysMeet is over because it was a go-to part of my support system through grad school.

In our first semester studying together, a member of my cohort proposed using TodaysMeet to create a backchannel that we could use to keep in touch, to support each other, to share what was going on in our lives outside of school, to raise questions about homework, to share resources, and to generally boost morale and help us feel more connected to one another. Many of us joined in, at least for a while. Eight of us found lasting value in keeping in touch this way, and I count these folks dear friends today. We celebrated together, grieved together, worried together. We shared our joys and triumphs, and we shared our darkest low moments. I am not exaggerating when I say that this backchannel helped keep me level-headed and not completely lose my cool at several points through my four-year program, most notably during my comprehensive exams. It became a place for inside jokes, encouragement when feeling low, sharing our frustrations about school or life outside of school, and truly creating a community.

TodaysMeet was a key part of what an ethnographer studying my doctoral cohort would call social cohesion. It allowed for social presence--the quality of "being a real person" online--even though it was a text-based tool that allowed us to share in 140-character bursts. There was no assignment from class that was driving us to use this tool...we eight continued to use it, because it was valuable for us at a personal level. It was a key way for us to keep in touch, and to develop very real friendships. And these are indeed real friends! Though we connected via online courses, most of us have since met up face-to-face at conferences, and it's amazing how we just pick up right were we left off online. For people who might think that there is no way to develop a real relationship only through digital interactions...well, I beg to differ, based on my experience developing our community in our TodaysMeet chat over the past five years.

Deleting that button from my browser's bookmark bar was a significant moment for me. It means our group has moved on to other ways to keep in touch. (And we certainly have, through other social media.) But "BSU2013"--the year my cohort at Boise State came together--will always hold a special place in my memory, because of the friendships made using this backchannel.

While I'm grieving the end of TodaysMeet, I'm celebrating it too. TodaysMeet was an essential part of my grad school experience, and was the social glue that held us together!