"A big drop in chat room popularity
The study found a drop of chatroom use to just 18%, from 55% in 2000. As social networks are allowing people to reach others, including interest groups, and form weak ties with them by becoming friends or joining similar groups, with instant messaging allowing these users to have direct chat, and even to form their own private chat groups via the IM clients, I expect that these conversations are still going on, just in a different format. Watch this area - instant chat in Facebook groups, possibly?"
Okay, so not exactly the same - but my recent research on Fubar and their use of exactly this leads me to predict again that this isn't far off.
2 comments:
TechCrunch reported recently that IM is coming to Facebook, if you didn't see it. I'm not sure how that relates to groups but I think FB has a massive head start with IM because they already own your contact list and so much mind-share. I wonder how/if MSN and other chat platforms will react.
Hi cyberhill,
Thanks for the comment. Yes, I wrote a post on the use of IM in social networks in response to the Facebook announcement and the Bebo/AOL takeover: IM, Social Networks and the Death of SMS
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