The original note, as written at the time
A social app with emoticon-shaped characters in 2D space representing each participant in a chat. The app shows active members of the chat in the centre of the screen while members in the shadows sit at the side. The text is shown below and a crowd floats over the page. The emoticons can do simple actions like dancing, waving, clapping, nudging neighbours, walking etc, in addition to facial expression.
Ongoing development
A chat application where every participant is an emoticon-shaped character in two dimensions. Active members stand in the centre of the screen, quieter ones at the edges, the text runs below, and a small crowd floats over the page. The characters can dance, wave, clap, nudge a neighbour, walk about — in addition to facial expression.
What this restores is the thing text destroyed: you can see who is present.
A group chat is a list of names. It tells you who has spoken, not who is there. In a room, presence is obvious and it changes what you say — you do not tell a story to a person who has left. The emoticon arrangement puts the lurkers at the edges, in public, and that single piece of information does more for the quality of a conversation than any feature for threading or reacting.
The characters matter for a second reason. Text has no register, so every message arrives flat and the reader supplies the tone, usually wrongly. A figure that can wave, or shrug, or sit down, carries the register that a keyboard cannot, and it does so without the passive aggression of an emoji placed at the end of a sentence.
The danger is the obvious one: it becomes a toy. Animated figures are charming for a week and then they are furniture, and a chat that spends its screen area on dancing is a chat that hides its text.
So the rule should be that nothing moves unless a person moves it. Presence, not performance. The figure is a body, and a body in a chair is enough.
The interesting test of the idea: after a month, can you tell who is in the room without reading anything.