Baron, Chat doesn't appear to have many users at any one time, but the number of different users who have used chat at any one time probably numbers in the thousands. And chat has been a resilient beast - some loyalists have been in chat every trading day for the past 3 or 4 years. Some of ET's most committed members are in chat, so perhaps the low daily attendance doesn't tell the full story of chat's value to ET. A lot of people meet briefly in chat as well to do some real time conversation, so to the extent that ET's purpose is to create a community of traders, chat serves as a side meeting room when people want to meet "face to face" after browsing the boards. A few of the popular journals are written by chat residents, like Nodoji, CFerret, 1Reason and many of their readers pop into chat from time to time to talk to the journal authors. In short, chat's value to growing and maintaining the ET subscriber base punches far above the apparent attendance numbers.
I want to add that chat, not forum was the place where I met some people who really helped me so much to become a better trader, so one should not undervalue chat and despite the fact only about 20 people there usually at a time, personally me considered it very valuable ET asset...
"WOW That sucks" This is unfortunate. Chat was an extremely valuable resource. Who will organize the substitute?
chat was 'wankville'. they never talked trading! look at the logs five guys playing grabazz and i am sure they will miss it
Baron, Sorry to see that you are hit with economic downturn like so many others. Servers are cheap, especially when you don't really need backup and much storage. Hope things turn around for you soon so that you could afford a chat room... 777
Mad - its very easy to have an AIM chat ongoing during the day. We can call it "ET Chat" - AIM is free and just as easy as the ET chat. That's the only thing I can suggest short of convincing ET to offer up the chat again.