Mathew's comments - Latest Comments in Meebo: Chat rooms are so 1998

Re: Meebo: Chat rooms are so 1998

facebook-737452507 — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:20:23 -0000

The primary market for the embedded chat rooms are the Lifecasters that want to "nurture" a community for themselves right on their websites.

Re: Meebo: Chat rooms are so 1998

johnstarta — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:11:47 -0000

Everything old is new again. Clothes, toys, and now the web.

The primary market for the embedded chat rooms are the Lifecasters that want to "nurture" a community for themselves right on their websites.

Re: Meebo: Chat rooms are so 1998

MarkDykeman — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 14:13:03 -0000

Ironically, as I read your comment, your Twitter word balloon at the right says "Sorry, cannot load messages"...

Re: Meebo: Chat rooms are so 1998

mathewi — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 14:08:01 -0000

Actually, I was going to make that point as well, Mark -- but I thought the
post was getting too long as it was. I think you're right though, it kind
of is -- when it isn't down, that is :-)

Re: Meebo: Chat rooms are so 1998

MarkDykeman — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:32:49 -0000

Wouldn't you say that Twitter is making the chatroom obsolete?

Re: Meebo: Chat rooms are so 1998

Aidan Henry — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:06:10 -0000

I would have to agree. I can use my IM client to chat with contacts. Chatting with random visitors who just happen to be on the same website at the same time as me is likely to provide very little value.

Cheers,
Aidan
www.MappingTheWeb.com

Re: Meebo: Chat rooms are so 1998

mathewi — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 12:11:02 -0000

Yeah, I agree Brent. I just don't see it having any kind of compelling
advantage -- or a great business model, for that matter, even if Meebo does
do distributed advertising. It makes sense for live support and that kind
of thing, as you mentioned, but other than that it's a pretty forgettable
feature, IMHO.

Re: Meebo: Chat rooms are so 1998

Brent Ashley — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 12:06:15 -0000

You're right - it's never been that hard, and it's practically trivial these days with advanced Ajax toolkits.

I first built it as a proof of concept with less than 100 lines of code on client and server and then expanded it into a free service that's been running virtually unchanged since 2002 - Tim Aiello continues to host it at http://www.blogchat.com. While there are a few long-time users, most people try it out and tire of it after a few days.

There are companies who have extended the idea to provide live product support, and I've used that on vendor sites a few times to good effect. I have never seen the concept gain any real traction outside of that realm, however.

Providing an embedded chat room for blogs, while a neat gimmick, has no supportable business model that I've been able to discover. It might provide minimal incremental value to a hosted blogging service, but nobody's going to pay for it when there are so many free and simple alternatives whose features are "good enough" (such as a shoutbox, one of many examples).