Feature
The social layer your site is missing
Comments are a conversation with a delay. A chat is a reason to still be on the site ten minutes later, and a reason to come back tomorrow.
They can see each other
A visitor who can see that eleven other people are reading the same thing behaves differently from one who thinks they are alone.
Members, not accounts
With single sign-on, people in the chat are your members, with your profile links — so the chat feeds your site rather than competing with it.
It stays on your site
The conversation is not on a platform that can change its rules, and the traffic is yours.
How it works
The parts that make it a community instead of a message box
People become recognisable
Names and pictures come from your own accounts through single sign-on, so the same person is the same person every time. A room where everybody is a fresh nickname never develops regulars.
Favourites, so they can find each other
Starring somebody puts them where they can be found next time. Communities form around a handful of people who turn up reliably, and this is how the rest notice who those are.
A private conversation is one click from the room
Two people who got talking in the room can carry on without it. That step — public to private — is most of what turns an audience into a community.
Rooms per topic as it grows
One room is right at the start and wrong later. Adding rooms per topic or per show lets a community divide itself rather than turning into one undifferentiated scroll.
Questions
- How is this different from a forum?
- A forum is for people who are not here at the same time; the value is the archive. This is for people who are, and the value is that they are not alone. Sites with both do well — the threads keep what was worked out, the room keeps the people.
- Do I need a big audience for this to work?
- You need a simultaneous one, which is not the same thing. Fifty people who arrive when a show starts is a livelier room than fifty thousand who trickle through over a month.
- Can members message each other?
- Yes, and you can restrict it to identified members or turn it off entirely — enforced on the server, not by hiding a button.
- What stops it turning unpleasant?
- The rules run before a message reaches anybody: word filter, link permission by member grade, rate limits, per-site bans. On a public room on your own domain that is your reputation, so it is included on every plan rather than sold as an add-on.
Put a chat on your site this afternoon
One script tag before the closing body tag. Fourteen days free, and no card until you decide.