Chat Rooms- are they a big deal ?
Businesses call it “Collaboration Software” whereas the rest of the world calls it by whatever program they are using - “chatrooms” “forums”, “bulletin boards”, etc. This is definitely true of persistent chat solutions. The idea has been around longer than text messaging. The concept has roots in AOL chat rooms, message boards, BBS’s, even list-servers.
The challenge with looking at persistent chat from the “nose bleed” seats of the Astro Dome is that persistent chat can be implemented in so many different ways and used for so many different things.
- A disaster recovery team may want persistent chats to track issues asynchronously but in near real-time.
- A helpdesk may want a persistent chat to help customers and reduce the number of support personal.
- A Project team may want persistent chat for handle tasks and “to-do” assignments.
What starts to differentiate one implementation from another is (1) the feature set; and (2) the infrastructure or integration with existing systems.
I’ll use three examples -
- the ubiquitous web forums
- TeamSessions by Instant Technologies
- Campfire by 37Signals
(caveat - I only picked these because I have either used them or they were near the top of a Google search). These are by no means exhaustive of the genre nor do they cover all use cases.
Web forums are everywhere. A nice feature about forums is they thread messages very well. It’s easy to have multiple topics covered simultaneously and overlapping. But, forums are really not “chats”. A typical user case would not assume two or more users would be active at the sametime, waiting for replies from one another. Forums are most often web based so they tend to support web metaphors well - text, images,links, etc. Most forums discourage uploads so they are not purposed for content sharing. Web forums have many implementations - some are open source, most will deploy onto a standard web server / application server infatuation. This means you can get hosted forums with most Internet hosting provider services as well as get the software and install it yourself - you decide if you want a hosted service or a private installation (say, on your business network and behind your firewalls).
TeamSessions is a web based solution that leverages a java applet to provide an “IM-like” user experience. It leverages Lotus Sametime for it’s real-time awareness and network infrastructure. (Users are not required to use Sametime as their text messaging solution but TeamSessions integrates well into existing Sametime environments.)
Adding rooms is quick and access to rooms can be restricted or left open to registered users. The rooms support text and images as well as storage for documents. TeamSessions is differentiated by some of its more business centric features such as security features, the ability to manage the growth or team rooms (both issues important to company IT departments), personal alerts (where a user defined monitors’ and gets alerted when user defined keywords are detected in the chat of a room), etc.
While TeamSessions can be hosted, most installations are within a company’s network. Again, it comes back to its integration with Sametime.
Campfire is a web based hosted service. It has a web-friendly user experience and makes it easy for users to have numerous “rooms”. Setting up rooms is quick and access to rooms can be controlled. The rooms support text and images as well as uploading of documents. One strong feature of Campfire is it’s integration across rooms. A user can “slice and dice” activity across all of the rooms they have joined. This makes it more likely that lots of rooms (with narrow topic / focus) can be managed by an end user. Without this capability, tracking and interactive with a large number of chatrooms would be difficult at best. As I mentioned, Campfire is a hosted service. Thus, if you have restrictions that prevent you from using an Internet service or you prefer to deploy a software solution on your own network, this is not an option.
One thing I did not see in the two “real” chatroom solutions above are some of the Web 2.0 features. I expect to see solutions move in this direction with support for RSS/ATOM feed readers at the very least but also the ability to extend the persistent chat solutions with “widgets” from other vendors / sources.
I have not personally used Campfire beyond a quick demo but the video tour really looks compelling. I have used TeamSessions and, in the business case I use it it, it is very effective. Probably the most compelling feature is that it integrates with the instant messaging solution used at work (Lotus Sametime). I had a chance to try out the Sametime 7.5 client with a plug-in that gave me direct access to my TeamSessions chat rooms. It made use the chatrooms as seamless as my regular instant messaging.
One topic I avoided for the time being is “best practices for on-line meetings”.I mention this because chatrooms are often used as virtual meeting rooms.There is a litany of discussion going on about how to best collaborate across virtual teams - especially will all of the telecommuting. I’ll try to tackle that topic some other time.
Disclaimer: I am not a representative of Instant-Technologies or 37Signals. I gain no compensation from them and do not necessarily represent their views. I have attempted to correctly depict the technology described above but do not guarantee accuracy for the statements made.
