A question sometimes triggers off a whole new thought process!

One such question is the "why have them?" when it comes to chat communities.

I have to admit I have been struggling with this one for a while now and keep putting it aside for when I have time,

a mistake perhaps, but after years of thinking in a particular direction redirection was not something to be taken lightly and straying outside the "comfort zone" is after all work of sorts.

Prior to MSN closing the free chat facility there was a lot of effort put into creating online communities for people to share information, pictures and so forth. Coupled to this was an easy to use chat room facility and it was not uncommon to find large groups of people spending time sharing ideas and laughs online.

When the free chat dried up many found themselves scrambling around looking for an alternate yet familiar type of chat and a variety of chat "clones" emerged to try to fill the gap.

MSN closed down what was left of the Community sites, giving users the option of moving to multiply.com but from what I've see this is not going to hold the same appeal for users..

Webworxpro chat community has been around for some time now, the idea at the time was to create a replacement site for the Wanting the whole shebang community site and to find a free replacement chat so that members and friends could continue to chat and enjoy the internet like we were used to and while they are still available we will continue to link to and use free chat facilities.

For now though it seems the Face book craze has grabbed peoples attention and a series of clone sites has emerged, I tested a few and found the following:

People add you and never talk to you, often you find a user has over 200 "friends" now this I find amazing! because I can talk the hind leg off a donkey and there is no way in hell I could get to talk to more than 200 folks in a month and still have time to eat and/or sleep!

Advertising is the name of the game and nine of the ten "friends" that add you have a visitmysite@yahoodotcom stuck prominently in  profile.

You get bombarded with weird invites, sexy cocktails, karma requests, glittery stuff but to name a few of them.

Friends of friends get to see who you are in touch with and before long your friends start getting hounded by folks you never knew existed and some of the folks you do know and couldn't be bothered about suddenly have ring side seats to your blog, log, journal, album or whatever it is you pass the time of day doing in your little corner of the universe.

Meantime.. back at the ranch there is still little or no communication going on.

Now I am not for one moment suggesting that all "chat" is going to change this, in fact a recent discussion in our chat room raised the point that of the hundreds of chatters spoken to over the years only a very few still continue to keep in contact today.

But chat we do and what is important is that it costs us nothing but our time and the time is given freely and enjoyed, there are no hidden agendas and the friendships formed are real.

We get out what we put in its as simple as that.

If your bored and looking for some action, hot chat, and steamy wild online action..

You landed in the wrong place

This is where real people hang out!

And now I guess I can put my question to bed again, for another few years at least.