Adding a real-time "Town Square" to bring back the feeling of shared presence on the web

The author describes adding a "Town Square" feature to their website — a small interactive strip at the bottom of each page where stick figures represent real-time visitors. Users can see what pages others are reading, walk around, and send messages. The goal is not to build another social network, but to recreate the feeling of shared presence and serendipitous human connection that the early web had, where you could "bump into" other people browsing the same site.