Yaplet is a neat new service that’s been around for sometime and on my list of pending writeups. The service enables users to chat on websites with other people who are visiting the same website at the time. The service is similar to Geesee, which launched back in 2006 and has been growing since.
There are two main ways a chat can be initiated on a particular site. A user can drag the Yaplet bookmarket onto their toolbar and trigger it on any website they wish to chat on, or they can enter the website’s URL on Yaplet’s homepage. On the other hand, the website owner can himself integrate the chat button on their website — something I don’t see a lot of people doing unless it’s one of their main purposes.
The chat sidebar resembles that of any other chatting service, and users can select their name, as well as manage a lot of the other settings like filtering and moderating. A neat thing about the Yaplet chatting system is that it stores all the previous conversations and messages, which are then display on the next visit.
While a neat idea, I can see where the usefulness for something like Yaplet can be question. Sure, for the bigger sites, particularly those which cover a happening event — like the Presedential Primaries or a Steve Jobs keynote — the tool can be instrumental. That said, I don’t a lot of usefulness for everyday use for most users.
