Cbox chat for social web: worth a second look?

Cbox: chat for the social web

Cbox is a chat and messaging application that combines the features of traditional chat and tagging systems, for use on web sites and blogs. In order to use Cbox, you have to sign up on the Cbox site, but once it is in use on your site, your own users will not have to sign up or download anything.

There are three versions of Cbox: free, premium, and premium multi-thread. The free version includes all the basic functionalities, but is ad-supported. For $2 a month, you can get the premium version. It is ad-free, offers security filters, sound notifications, message archive, and “who’s online.”

And the last option, premium plus, offers the same things as premium plus, access to a simple API on the back-end and the ability to create new threads for each new article, or user, or group, or event, but costs $13.90 a month. To see the complete list of features, click here.

Should you use Cbox?

While Cbox does have several benefits, such as allowing users to interact with each other instaneously and reading previous messages in real-time, it also has some drawbacks. Users do not have to sign-up or download anything, which makes it easy and quick, but, most users are accustomed to commenting on a post they find interesting, not having a conversation about it in a Cbox.

Also, many web hosting sites come with a similar type of program or chat box, so you really would not need this in those cases. Additionally, the need for this type of program is almost obsolete. Most people use hashtags, tags, comments, and links in their posts and the Cbox offers no integration for these elements. Cbox offers emoticons and color choices, but not much else. No Facebook or Twitter synchronization.

Though Cbox is a great idea, displaying a continuous conversation on the side of your web page, blog, or other site, it still lacks functionality. There are plenty of other applications that offer you the ability to chat and be social (tag your friends, interests, and plans), many of which are already integrated, so because of Cbox’s limited capacity, it is truly only useful for very specific instances and niches, not necessarily for all professionals.