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Just before Web 2.0 Kicked off , the closer you could get to have a chat in your blog was a messaging system, and they were a lot of them. completely useless most of the times, since the so called "almost live" messages really could get clogged or take from 1 minute if it was fast to 10 minutes, so for me that kind of add on is as good as death since services offering Embed Flash Chat are starting to pop up.

Chatango is one of those services are making in roads to this new niche of addons.

The name being a clever slang of spanglish would translate as a "Intimate Dance of Words". well, i guess that names that actually have a meaning can also enter the Web 2.0 right?.

Anyway, i just tried Chatango and i must say i am both pleased and mad with it.

The Good:

Good idea, good features, good tools.

The idea behind Chatango is the very same idea that shoutbox was going for some years ago, but chatango added something that give it actual value into it a network of users who you can communicate besides the option of having a one on one chat with your visitors.

The window for the flash chat is completely customizable and sizable so you can have it in whatever webpage you have. the load of the app is fast and it deliver what it promises.

One of the features behind it after doing a account is to have a good profile so you can get into the one on one chats with other chatango users and to prmote yourself that way.

The main tools behind it is a status button and a desktop app that will mantain you not only being able to use the service but actually take advantage of it without having your browser open on their site or even your blog to follow your chats

Status Button



Desktop App




The Bad:

It really shows that the don´t really know how to promote their service at all and don´t have any good Pr ideas behind. i mean c´mon, the service don´t have a company blog, and that is a huge mistake because in what other way we are supposed to know about the services updates, issues and thinking behind the service?

And the navigation in the site is just not straight forward or very integrated to say the least. it has some very obvious flaws.

I really would not know about this service if not someone told me about, it is not even pushed by the usual suspects.

And that the service still have some glitches, slowdowns but i guess that for something as new as this is more than understandable.

Here i have a test chat so you can see how it is: