What is Oinker?

Online chat or instant messaging has become an essential way of communication in recent times. I would imagine that for many of you, it would be almost the primary channel to communicate with other people in your workplaces.

The messages in online chat are always flowing and older messages virtually disappear in terms of the concept of “stock and flow“. What would you do if there are decisions on the current project or seemingly important ideas flowing in your chat timeline? Actually, it happens all the time. You might copy and paste it into your project management system.

Oinker is the most powerful way to take advantage of these kind of opportunities. It looks like a plain chat program on the surface, but it allows you to save the specified messages (called ‘oinks’ in Oinker) on the spot, and more importantly, it allows you to connect the messages in an infinite number of ways to build sophisticated contents. In other words, it works as a bridge between stock and flow.

In an Oinker chatroom, the saved messages and organized contents are instantly shared with the roommates. You are not just chatting with the others but also elaborating ideas and contents collaboratively in real time.

Besides chatting, in terms of ideation, writing in small pieces promotes the output of your thoughts (as you may have experienced if you have ever used Twitter), therefore, Oinker is still useful even if you are chatting to yourself.