Web chats have died

Forum Moderators: phranque

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Web chats have died

boromir27

3:02 pm on Feb 28, 2008 (gmt 0)

This really upsets me.

Back in the day, you could chat with ordinary, non-geek people on different Web sites (not IRC, or at least they had a friendly interface).

Now it's never happening. I have no contact with non-geeks through the Internet anymore.

What happened? Why did all sites kill their chats? All major sites in my country have killed them, one by one, the last few years. Now there is ZERO left. What could possibly be the cause of this? It's low-bandwidth and drives traffic and loyal users. Why the hell NOT?

Give me a time machine and I'll be going back to the good old days.

rocknbil

4:14 pm on Feb 28, 2008 (gmt 0)

Are you talking about live chat on web pages?

Probably a bandwidth issue and because there are so many better tools. GoogleTalk, AIM, Messenger . . .

Most of the other stuff is carried on bulletin boards like this one, which is the foundation of social networking IMO (if anyone remembers the original bulletin boards. :-) )

I think you're looking in all the wrong places, the web is inundated with chat. Chat, chat, chat, chat, chat, . . . .

boromir27

4:27 pm on Feb 28, 2008 (gmt 0)

Bandwidth? It's not eating almost any bandwidth at all.
Those IMs you mentioned are... IMs. Not chats.

SteveWh

8:09 pm on Feb 28, 2008 (gmt 0)

It could be due to the many vulnerabilities, such as XSS, in chat programs. My webhost used to offer 2-3 chat programs installable through cPanel, but now there is not one. All disabled for security reasons. Look up the popular chat applications at Secunia. It's a minefield. A chat with a site admin using an insecure chat app can allow cookie stealing and login as the admin.

Forums generate indexable text pages on which ads can be put and which can draw visitors long after a thread goes inactive. Real time chat doesn't.

For a webmaster, time spent in chat is usually time that could be more profitably spent doing something else that will have more permanence.

A chat only gets the input of whoever happens to be there at that moment. A forum discussion spans a longer time and can get more and better input from a wider group of people. They don't have to all agree to be in the same place at the same time.

[edited by: SteveWh at 8:11 pm (utc) on Feb. 28, 2008]

Beagle

12:54 am on Mar 4, 2008 (gmt 0)

A chat only gets the input of whoever happens to be there at that moment. A forum discussion spans a longer time and can get more and better input from a wider group of people. They don't have to all agree to be in the same place at the same time.

This is the main drawback for me. I have a forum where about half the members are North American (either US or Canada, in 4 time zones), about 25% are in Britain or a sprinkling of other European countries, and the rest are in Australia, New Zealand, and Japan (and one in Malaysia who's drifted away - I miss her). When you leave a post, you know you won't get everyone's feedback for awhile, but since you're expecting that, it's not a problem. And we don't evolve into cliques depending on when we're awake.

I haven't experienced the security problems, but I've heard enough about them to make that another drawback. My guess is that's what's killed a lot of the ones that used to operate. And I don't even like to think about what a hassle a chat room could be to moderate.

I have no idea how the new "social networking" sites operate, or whether they have any real-time events, but I'm sure they're pulling away a lot of the people who would have been in chat rooms a few years ago.

I do know that on some of the "virtual life" sites, members can set up real-time events - throw a party, teach a seminar, get some people together just to talk. More complicated than a chat room, but it might be an option?

[edited by: Beagle at 1:09 am (utc) on Mar. 4, 2008]