Hi,

I've been using Last.fm and although I don't shout the shoutbox in everypage is a very used feature. Notice that in Last.fm you need to be logged in to shout anyway. Spam bots are terrible so beware.

I have one idea between the login and the free shout box. Instead of forcing a login to post, you (read SnipIt) can show the post box with two additional fiels: name and email (url, OpenID, whatever) and create or reuse a new user. One that is between active and nonexistant. So this user does not have a login but has snips associated to him and when the user decides to register you can ask something like "Did you write this things: ...?".

(ofcourse a "no" would give the same headaches ...) :-)

PS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SnipSnap the first step to become famous ;-)

PPS: Lots of spelling errors and others. Feel free to improve.