ZoHo Chat: Why does it Exist?
I just had a quick look at the Zoho Chat application and I can’t for the life of me think what it might be useful for. I’m generally a fan of Zoho applications, Zoho Creator is fabulous, but the chat application seems less than useful.
The major flaw is that it doesn’t interoperate with any other chat services. I have ID’s on Yahoo, ICQ, AIM and MSN because of various groups of friends but I don’t see the value in asking someone to join Zoho Chat just so they can talk to me. Zoho chat is just too obscure to generate a relevant critical mass of users to chat with.
Zoho chat does offer the possibility of adding a chat widget to a web site which the aforementioned chat services do not but if you compare that to Meebo and the MeeboMe Widget it doesn’t really stack up. Meebo does interoperate with all of the popular chat services and offers a lot more features than Zoho chat.
The only redeeming feature of Zoho chat is possible future integration with the Zoho online office suite. Users collaborating on a document being able to use instant messaging to communicate from within the document would be an advantage but only a limited one.
All in all just go straight to Meebo rather than using Zoho Chat.
