Is free online chat service dead?

The internet has seen a severe decrease in people using free online chat services such as Yahoo Chat (http://chat.yahoo.com), MSN Chat, and AOL chat (http://peopleconnection.aol.com/main). This leads to the question; is online chat dead?

The industry has seen the total pull out by MSN, and a decline in users by AOL and industry leader Yahoo. Much of this is due to an overwhelming invasion by spammers using what is often referred to as "bots". These "bots" are people that create fake profiles with the intent of sending people to another website in an attempt to make money. Often times these "bots" are using programs that give them the ability to log in hundreds of usernames at once and then blast a message to the rooms or by private message.

Yahoo Chat has recently made an attempt to battle back against the bots by implementing a "captcha" code each time you try to enter a chat room with the theory that "bots" will not be able to enter the code. Yahoo has also implemented a feature that logs a person out of chat every 3 hours forcing the user to re-enter the a captcha code to get back into a room.

Obviously if anyone has been in Yahoo Chat recently you will have noticed these changes, as well as the fact that bots still fill the chat rooms, however not in as many numbers as before. It would seem that the implementation of this captcha feature has only added one more hassle to real legitimist users while only putting a minor dent in the bot problem.

It's estimated that Yahoo Chat has only 30% of the users now that they did 3 years ago. This decline began when Yahoo decided to pull the option for users to create their own rooms due to the child predator scandal they endured, and continued as the bot infestation increased.

MSN decided to try a paid membership approach for a while before completely killing their chat all together, sending their remaining members to Yahoo.

AOL chat still exists, but barely. They too have been over run with bots and have taken a large hit in users.

There are some new players on the scene but problems are reported by their users as well. PalTalk (http://www.paltalk.com)has been around for a while now which does offer a free membership however to really enjoy the chat experience fully you need to upgrade to a paid membership. Another issue for many users of PalTalk is what is called room moderator "Nazis". These are people given the power to moderate a room, which in theory seems like a good idea, however often times it's reported that these moderators will kick users out of a room unjustifiably for things such as disagreeing with another user, or simply not liking them.

MySpace (http://www.myspace.com) is the newest player on the chat scene, and with the power behind the internet juggernaut you would think that they would take the online chat genre over. This has not been the case thus far; the chat rooms are limited and poorly categorized. There is also a complete lack of features when compared to other online chat services.

The newest and most promising free chat site is OohYa Chat http://www.oohya.net. This site boasts no bots, no booters, webcams, voice chat, image sharing directly to the chat rooms, and custom profiles with photo gallery for up to 20 pictures and a personal blog. The profiles at OohYa Chat also have a bit of a social networking taste about them as they let you search the profiles and make "connections" with other members allowing members to network with each other.

OohYa Chat is not without its problems either. For one it's a brand new site and doesn't have the user base of someone like Yahoo or AOL. If the site stays true to it's lack of bots and is able to continue to improve on their currently simple layout this may not be an issue for long. Some improvements could also be made to OohYa by creating a better room list structure and simplifying the way the webcam and voice work as they currently are bot activated when you start your webcam.

Obviously many of the people that once used online chat services have completely walked away from them all together. Will this trend continue or can companies like Yahoo revamp their service and bring the user base back up? If not, will these new players begin to revive the genre and bring those people left out in the cold back in?

Time will tell but I wouldn't announce online chat dead quite yet.