Hello,

Several people have indicated their interest in some form of chatting facility. Here are my thoughts:

- Once a question is answered on the forum the first time, the answers to the question are stored and indexed by search engines so that other people won't have to ask the same questions. This saves everybody's time.
- If we launch a chat room on Nairaland, people will start asking questions in the chat room instead of the forum and the quality of the forum will go down. This hurts all the people that are trying to make the forum a success.
- Compared to forums, chat rooms are more expensive to manage (control) and difficult to monetize. I don't know any company that is making money from free chatting services! (Nairaland is a business venture).
- Hardly do you find a chat room where serious discussions are going on, because those who have knowledge in various domains are too busy to spend their time on chat rooms waiting for someone to ask a question!
- A forum that recieves a lot of traffic can give you answers to your questions as fast as any chatroom, but even your answer is not immediately available you can leave the forum and check back for the answer at any convenient time. People can ask and answer questions at whatever time is convenient for them.

Based on the above points, I would like to say 'no' to chatting. I believe that it is better for us not to have a chat room on Nairaland. I believe the forum is a more efficient way to interact and we should focus on that.

What do you have to say about this? Am I missing something?

Seun.

I completely agree with you administrator. There are enough chat rooms on the internet -yahoo, hotmail and the rest. If the forum encourages chatting rooms then the attraction for serious-minded who want to interact and contribute intelligently will be lost.

I personally feel there too many social topics on the forum already with people getting more interested in knowing why women like men with big dicks.

The forum should be focused on its objectives and since it is still growing, we should encourage its development. PMs are sufficient for private conversations.

Look it at this way, presently we are all in the living room gisting with each other like one big happy family...
Once chatting is introduced everybody will disappear into rooms in the house to do their own thing with whoever they please..
I'm gonna miss a lot of people if that happens....
The PM thing is there so let's be content with that....
From there you could get to know someone on a different level and get each other's chat id on yahoo or msn..
I simply love reading our responses to topics that are thrown out to the forum so I say NO to chatting abeg...

The Administrator and my fellow people of nairaland, I firstly appreciate the effort of everbody to make this website known in the world as one of the educative website and that also cover every areas of life.
With the little knowledge I have about the hosting of a website and about IT generally, I want to support Seun(Admin) that including chatting room in this website will affect many things and it will even cost money because of some things like uploading of picture sending and receiving of files and some other things.
So let us just concentrate on the forum and make people in our area to know more about this website and share more light to them to know the importance of be a member of this website.
Once again I commend Seun (Admin) for job welldone.

Nairaland is welcome to have an IRC chat room on a server that i own co-run, so users can have a real time chat (naturally all for free etc)

I don't really feel that having a chat room lowers forum quality at all or makes less traffic, two sites I am quite active on (and even my own) have active IRC communities and active sites.

IRC can me monetized if you wish by providing a web client that has ad's delivered to the user (or they can download the software but that isn't pratical at schools etc)

Trust me hidden hunter. Chat rooms will dabaru the forum. The forum won't be organised. Infact most topics in the forums are more like chat rooms, so why bother making a chat room.

I like nairaland without chat room. the first thing i checked when i got here was if there was no chat room and to my joy, there wasn't. If any of you know "Festacof face" or wateva $h!t that site is...the chat room there is annoying and not functioning. I think Nairaland would be better off without a chat room.

I guess it all depends on the community

Hardly do you find a chat room where serious discussions are going on, because those who have knowledge in various domains are too busy to spend their time on chat rooms waiting for someone to ask a question!

@seun if you are talking about the revenue aspect of chatting on Nairaland, there are so many possiblities, only that you have to think about it. The only reason that i know is that it may be a lil be difficult on the tech side, I wonder if you know how much Yahoo is making from their chat service.

It would have been a great thing to have a chat room here. And i don't agree with you about the issue of knowledgeable not chatting. Take a look at the Computer chat room on Yahoo.

Anyway, chatting on Nairaland can never be compared to Yahoo or others, but if only people can come together to cook up IM clients/server for Nairaland it would have been a great idea, but that is just not possible at this juncture.

Due to the prolific chat-posting of some of our users, I'm tempted to try a Nairaland chat room.

Alleluyah!!!!! Alleluyah!! But uhmm...i still don't buy the idea. Anyways it's all good.

It's a temptation. I know it's not the best but people are chatting on the forum! No, I am not mentioning the names of hot-angel, nike4luv,makgod, Latoya.

LOL. Mmkay. bring it on..You r just gonna get me more addicted to nairaland.

well if you do decide to go with chat, I suggest IRC because of it's low bandwdith overhead, I wrote a guide on my site for connecting to an IRC network with mIRC, to show how simple it is

Also this wouldn't cost seun a cent so that's gotta be good in his eye's
http://www.syncerror.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=15

I would prefer a system that doesn't require the installation of any additional software. What about the installation of a simple shoutbox on the home page?

I think its a fact that if a chat room is created then the forum will go down...

I agree with u Hunter.It would be to have a chatting room and there is anything the admin will need should contact the nairalandars for support.Let's see how we can develop the chatting room.Beside,it won't bring down the forum.ops!I think i'm on track.

I agree with u Hunter.It would be to have a chatting room and there is anything the admin will need should contact the nairalandars for support.Let's see how we can develop the chatting room.Beside,it won't bring down the forum.ops!I think i'm on track.

Well i don't really think we need the chatting coz i'm okay with my yahoo and msn messengers, however seun we need to be able to send personal messages again

you wann@ chat? go to the recycle bin and create a topic.

You have said it all,that there is no profit in chatting

@seun,i do not buy the idea chattin let ontinue postin our comment or idea so that u can read or view at any point in time or wot do u all f eel?

my keyboard is fuckin up

You said it all my personal person. It is not advisable to chat on the nairaland web as it gives rise to all these cheats that would attract EFCC to the website, so my people, NOTHIN DEY HAPPEN.

i love this forum the way it is, adding a chatroom would (for lack of a better word)de-value it.This forum 'rocks' so let's keep it rocking!!Nice work y'all.

Re:chatting on nairaland

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adding chat room would not bring disturbance instead attract more users.thank you the administrator.

chat room and forum does not offer the same satisfaction and chat room cannot bring the forum down cuzz they simply offer different services, chat room gives an avenue for a 1 on 1(privately) that forum doesnt give, if chat is allowed fine, if its not Nairaland still stands.

I like this forum a lot,but iv been trying to put in some discusssions.how do i contribute to job discussions.im not sur i like the idea of chatting.Fellow nairalanders wat do u think.

hey, kai, chat room for where ? the thing wey dey here for nairaland is too much for us to eat, just forget chat room mata ooooooooo.

More importantly, let there be a facility that will show who and who are chatting on other site that can be accessed from naira land.

I think chatting is cool , although I'm New here but it will give people a reason 2 stay on line 4 a while, there are a lot people that visits the site and later get bored reading posts and log out. With chatting u get 2 know when your friends going to come around and with different rooms u know where 2 go and exchange ideas in business and other discussions , plus conversations will flow with ideas compare 2 replying in a day or 2 . It will also attract other people or races from other cultures .  I say give it a try for like 6 months and pull the plug if its not successful  .

4get d chat, we make do wit d forum, i'm new, n hv already kept up wt new contacts via yahoo i.m, wat more do we need, i say,

Yea you're right.
I don't think a chat room will be advisable here in Nairaland