A talker is a great place to chat with many people at once in almost real time. Talkers are also useful for one-on-one conversations when the parties have incompatible talk daemons on their systems or IRC is just too slow.

A talker (the server) resides on a UNIX account and people can telnet to it. The function of a talker is to provide a place to chat. It is not a MUD, though I have seen some talkers that allow "fights". It is not graphical beyond the art you can make with your keyboard. It is not IRC, though some talkers can link to other talkers. Users make up a nickname and OWN that nickname. Hence, you can send mail to other users within the system, even if you are a Newbie! Talkers are smaller yet friendlier than most other chat services.

This varies from talker to talker and also depends a lot on the source code on which the talker is based. And, of course it depends on what user level you are. If you use a NUTS based talker, all commands start with a ".", without the quotation marks. Say you want to send a private message to the user named Turtle. You would type: .tell turtle hello! Abbreviations for some commands are available and again, this depends on the talker. Most talkers allow you to send and read mail through the talker, send a private message to someone logged in, write a message on a room's message board, and enter a profile.

Talkers have a classification system. When you first log in, you will be a newbie and be treated as such. To be promoted, sometimes you have to give the system adminstrators your email address or enter the required stats. Most talkers frown upon users asking for a promotion. Doing so may set it so that you will never be promoted. Patience, using the talker a lot, and being polite are important to the people in charge and they will reward this behavior with your promotion. Unless you own a talker, you will probably never reach the highest user level.