Might be worth checking out.
Microsoft today released some tools to add chat facilities to Websites.
That’s a potential 320 million active Windows Live Messenger users your website could be talking to. Visitors who want to chat on Websites with the feature will have to sign up if they don’t already have an account.
I think I’ll be having a look and see what it’s like. I’ve tried these chat services before and the main reason I didn’t like them was they were ugly.
Kind of difficult to blend into some of the designs we needed a chat system (or so we thought). And it really comes down to your business model if this sort of service is useful or not.
Yahoo messenger is offering the same service also, Yahoo Pingback. It is a decent solution for free live chat, though the issue with both services is that there is no visitor monitor.