Chapter 9. Chat Services
A chat room allows you to communicate in real time (via keyboard) with several people at once. This can be a great way to build your community—for example, by having a "Weekly Wednesday Chat" every Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. Or perhaps your customers would enjoy an informal Q&A session just before you launch a new product.
It doesn't make sense when you have only one or two people to talk with (just pick up the phone or use Skype for that), but if you have 10 to 20 people all yammering at once, an online chat makes a lot more sense.
Several web hosting accounts include chat functions, but they're generally not very good. These services offer good performance at low cost:
See also "Communications," as some of those sites may offer conferencing capabilities.
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