New tool called Chookka today offers the "&" as the symbol for conversations

The @ and # signs have become popular representations for a username and a topic, respectively. Today, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company is launching an open beta release of a new tool that it hopes will empower the “&” as the sign of a conversation.

The cloud-based tool is called Chookka, the first release from a product incubator called LavaRipples LLC. It is intended to solve the much-lamented problem of email overload by converting emails into a thread in a social conversation stream.

A Chookka — it’s the name of a conversational topic as well as the tool — provides a conversation-based flow of chat posts, IMs, and files, interspersed with emails on a specific subject.

A user can reply to the emails within the flow; the reply gets posted in the Chookka and emailed back. Or emails on a topic can be forwarded from an email account to appear as a thread inside a Chookka — or sub-conversations, appropriately called sub-Chookkas.

“Nothing else takes the position that there are conversations” as the key organizer, president, and co-founder Yves Schabes told VentureBeat. “We’re competing with others, but they don’t take the same approach.”

He noted, “A group is not a conversation … a group is a [static] set of people.” One group might organize itself as, for example, a marketing group. However, they discuss topics unrelated to marketing — which is why Schabes prefers conversations as the key organizer. Chookka conversations can include anyone, and only invitees see the conversation.

Essentially, Chookka’s approach is to use threads (conversations), with emails available to become part of the mix, compared to conference rooms (groups). But the key question is whether users will find this a significantly better and less time-consuming way to exchange information and make decisions than email and current collaboration tools.

Chookka, the tool, which previously was available in an invitation-only beta, is being offered in a free version, a Pro version ($5/account/month) or a Premium level ($10/account/month). The initial targets are both families and business users, and Schabes said “an enterprise version may be offered at some point.”

The company, started in 2011 by Schabes, Emmanuel Roche, and Tao Meng, has been self-funded. Schabes and Roche had been owners of Teragram Corporation, a provider of text analytics and multilingual natural language processing, which SAS Institute acquired in 2008 for an undisclosed sum.