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Not sure if folks want to pay 1 Steem for every 1000 messages sent

There's also SBD. It wouldn't be a chat messenger, it would be an attention request service.

So basically I have to pay 1 SBD to spam 1000 people, I'm sure that very useful to the mass Steemians who don't run services

No, you'd have to pay based on the settings that the users set. For example I probably wouldn't see any message for less than 5 SBD.

no kidding, i should start responding to > 1 SBD messages then ... lol

so where do we set this minimal "setting"

My comment at the start of this thread was a suggestion. It's not how it currently works.

i actually thought the memo key was somehow a way to send memo without SBD or Steem

now i'm not sure if it's that useful