FEEDBACK: Should we add Chat / Instant Messenger on Chess.com?

Hello all! As you know we're always looking for ways to make Chess.com better. We have received a lot of requests to add an instant messenger to Chess.com and are now looking into it. This is how it would work:

A little bar would be added to the bottom of most pages on the site:

You would then be able to chat with your Chess.com friends as well as your Yahoo, Google, Facebook, AIM, etc friends (if you wanted to)! Or, you could just ignore the bar and it does nothing but show tiny ads on occassion. If you use Facebook then you already know about this kind of thing.

The chat and ads look like this:

Anyway, I wanted to get your thoughts on if you like this idea. I think it's cool - you can chat with friends anytime/anywhere on any page. You can even keep conversations going while you move through the different pages.

There would be an option to remove the bar for premium members.

Thoughts and feedback?

I vote yes.

I like it :)

I think that's missing from chess.com is a quicker way to communicate with your new chess friends.

yes

Hrmm...not sure.  Would you get ads as a premium member?

OG

no

I think that having the option to use the chat would be nice, so long as premium members don't have the ads.

less time and energy adding, more time and energy fixing...

YES...good work..lets get it started with next update to site

I know from experience that I don't use this kind of thing... I'd prefer it if it were possible to disable it as a non-premium member.

instant chat would be quite interesting ... but could quite easily get abused with opponents or people slagging others off? It is a good idea though aslong as it is monitored

this is NOT something that takes up Chess.com resources to do. it is a simple plugin done by a 3rd party.

as a premium user you could switch off the bar, but you couldn't keep the bar and get rid of the ads.

YESSSS !!

...vision w/ innovation, go erik -high 5! ...

Sounds fine as long as it doesn't slow down the processing of the game moves and game messages between the players.  Thanks.

I would not be interested in this feature. I wouldn't mind it if it were remavable for non-premium members.

I'm a bit torn on this. I think the bar and the IM feature in general needs to be optional, even for free members, and I don't really think I would want to use it.

But if this IM service is backed by, say, a chess.com xmpp server with my chess.com friends as contacts and allows me to connect to that server with my desktop IM client, then that would be a really nice feature.

it will NOT be optional for free member. that is part of the deal from meebo. they won't provide if we give that option. they pay for the service via the ads. 

it will NOT be accessible via an XMPP server for your desktop client.

erik,

You are a very focused go ahead person and I love to see new things happening for the good of chess.com as it is the members who benefit.

I do not know much about computers but a small add now and then I do not think will cause any problems for members

A YES from me !!

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes