Share audio clips, genealogy files, spreadsheets, zipped archive files… whatever you want. Just keep it legal.

Enjoy.

“I never really valued the privacy of a site like this until now! We are interviewing to hire at my work, and as I sat to interview this man, he proceeded to tell me MY life story! My arms are shaking as I write this! Most unsettling, he knew how much I don’t really like my current job and that wish I were elsewhere. He’s in there interviewing with my boss now, and I’m so scared! AAAAAHHHHHH!

Um, yay Spokt.”

– Name Witheld

1. Conversations
2. Privacy
3. Multi-Personality

Spokt.com is not about getting friends, connecting with old classmates, playing farmtown, Mafia wars, or scrabble. It’s not for marketing yourself as a social media advocate, guru, coach, or any other buzzword job title. It is about having conversations with people you are close to. The conversations happen as a family or as a group.

My family has been using it for years and we love it. I log in and immediately know how many unread posts are waiting for me. Imagine sitting around the living-room with your family talking. The conversation drifts and spawns new conversations. It’s fun. That’s what spokt lets you do without having to be in the same room and without having to be online at the same time.

No other web application gives conversations as much emphasis as Spokt.com. Conversations are valuable. Have you ever tried to have a conversation with more than two people over email? It’s a lot to sift through. We built Spokt for user enjoyment but it has a big practical side to it.

Privacy. This one is important but the most boring to talk about. There may or may not be privacy settings on Facebook that may or may not allow prying eyes to see information about you. I know I’ve tried to lock down my account as tightly as I could but I don’t really have confidence that the information is private. I don’t want to spend my time navigating the privacy options, reading the terms of service, digesting all that is written about Facebook and privacy. I treat the information I share as public just in case they ever decide to make it be public or in case they share it with advertisers or…whoever. Spokt is private. You and your family get to read your posts. There is no other way to use spokt.com. The information is yours not ours, we don’t see it, we don’t share it.

This last “feature” is a little subtle but one of my favorites. I’m calling it multi-personality here but Seinfeld fans might know it as “Independent George” (youtube). Inside spokt I belong to a “Hixon Family” hub. The members of this hub are my parents, siblings, and in-laws. I’m also in my wife’s family hub: “Mills Family.” In the “Mills Family” hub I’m a son-in-law. I act slightly differently in these two hubs. I also have a hub with some of my closest friends. Sometimes I’ll post something to one hub and not the others and sometimes I post to all three. I think we all act a little differently in different company and I think that’s okay. You don’t send all your emails to everyone you know so why does it make sense to have a global “Status update?”

There you have it. Why Facebook, twitter, etc., aren’t enough. Check out our demo video, sign up, and invite your family today. It’s as free as Free Parking.

It’s a random blast from the past. One of the benefits of Spokt is that after a while you have a rich history of conversations with your group. It really is great to go back and re-read past conversations.

You can click the photo to revisit or you can click on the “See More” link to be taken to a different photo. Once you’re on that page you can reload (or refresh) the page and each time a new random photo will be displayed.

Enjoy!

Hello,

The page “Become a Fan to win an Apple iPad (from spokt.com)” has been removed because it violated our Terms of Use. A Facebook Page is a distinct presence used solely for business or promotional purposes. Among other things, Pages that are hateful, threatening, or obscene are not allowed. We also take down Pages that attack an individual or group, or that are set up by an unauthorized individual. If your Page was removed for any of the above reasons, it will not be reinstated. Continued misuse of Facebook’s features could result in your account being disabled.

If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit the Terms applicable to Facebook Pages at http://www.facebook.com/terms_pages.php.

The Facebook Team

I have read the terms they reference and cannot understand why they removed our page. We’ll see what we can do to restore the page but until then it seems our contest won’t continue.

We’re still trying to give away some sweet apple stuff including an iPad!

And the winner is: Alex Hill of Paintsville, KY.

Congratulations Alex!

Now let’s all suggest this page to all our friends so we can get to 20,000 fans and give away the iPod touch!

We got to 1,000 in about 10 days, if we want to get to iPod Touch (20,000) soon you’ll all have to suggest the page to your friends!

In case you missed the contest details you can find them here.

And don’t forget to checkout spokt.com to keep in touch with family privately. Our free plans last forever and you’ll be delighted how easy it is to use.