Chat Comes to JomSocial: 3rd Party Plugins Bring Conversations to Life

Big news in the JomSocial apps world this week as 3 new eagerly-awaited chat apps have been released.

First up, there's CometChat (www.cometchat.com) which bills itself as "..the first integrated inline chat script which works straight from your website."

Their website goes on by saying that CometChat will "increase interactivity by allowing your users to chat with their friends/online users and in-exchange keep them on your site.'

Cometchat comes in 3 versions:

Standalone edition

Integrate with your existing social networking or dating or community site.

vBulletin edition
Integrate CometChat with your vBulletin forum.

JomSocial edition
Integrate CometChat with your JomSocial community. 

After installation, your logged-in users will notice a familiar grey toolbar at the bottom of your website/community (CometChat looks almost identical to Facebook's chat/online friends toolbar) From here you'll be able to see which friends are online and engage them in a chat or two. If the chat window is minimized and a new message comes in, CometChat will audibly alert the user that a new message has come in, and a red bubble will appear on the minimized window top--just like Facebook. CometChat also automatically synchronizes your status updates with Jomsocia--including any custom hooks that your modules use.

I have personally tested CometChat on a dev site and I can attest that it works just as advertised! Price: $49; 1 year FREE UPDATES.

For more information about CometChat for JomSocial, please visit them here.

Next up is JBolo!

According to their website, JBolo "..is a really cool extension that will integrate Facebook & Gmail like chat into Joomla Websites."

Features in First Release:
- Integrates Seamlessly with Plain Joomla,  Community Builder or JomSocial
- Module Supports Showing All online users/ Only Friends
- Automatic Purging of Chat Database is supported via Cron Support.
- Gmail style bottom right display of chat boxes
- Keeps chat boxes open and stores state (data) even when pages are browsed/refreshed similar to Facebook
- Displays “Sent at…” after 3 minutes of inactivity
- Displays “X says…” & blinks chat boxes when window is not in focus
- Minimize and close chat boxes

Subscription Options :  6 Months $30  |  12 Months $55

For more information, please visit them here.

And finally, there is Avchat3--video chat software for small & large online communities.

Avchat3 is quite a bit different than the first two programs in that it is a standalone Flash Video Chat Application. Users in the chat can use their web cams and microphones to chat live with one another. The quality can be fully adjusted by the webmaster and access to the audio/video features can be limited.

Admins can log-in as hidden, kick and ban users, view their ip information, join private rooms, view the bandwidth usage, etc... .

AVChat 3 can be seamlessly integrated with your web site so that it looks the same and users will have the same username in the chat and in the web site.

AVChat 3 starts at $95/website. The integrated versions (Joomla/Jomsocial) are available as extras for $49 each.

Visit them here.