Hi everyone. Been a while since I've announced a new feature on here so I've got a few things for you guys.

At the bottom of your stories right above the comments, there should be a new option for you to activate a chat room for that particular story. This will enable a chat room for you and anyone else who is reading that story to talk with each other. The great thing about this for authors is that if you're a hands-on author that likes to greet people and interact with your readers, you'll get to see how many people are reading your story right now (not who though since that might be creepy) and if you greet them in chat, their browser title will also change with what you say to let them know they are being welcomed in chat. You can also set the chat to friends only if you like your privacy (the reader count will only show the number of friends currently reading your story though). Pretty straightforward, right?

Well maybe not that straightforward. Unfortunately, just like instant notifications, all this tech is still a bit expensive for us so for now, only AFF Gold Members can activate this feature on their stories. Once activated, anyone who visits your story can participate. Rest assured, I'm looking for ways to try to give stuff like this to more people (other than Gold members) but I'm rolling it out slowly for now just in case we hit our limits.

Anyway, remember this is a beta feature so let me know if you have any suggestions in the comments and if there's a continued interest in chat, then I'll continue to build it out and we may have dedicated chat sections as well (depending on demand). I'll continue updating this blog post with any new updates and answers to any questions, if there are any, below.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Sample screenshot:

Update April 28, 2014: The chat now remembers the last 10 messages so refreshing the page doesn't make you lose your place in the conversation. The chat history has an expiration of around a day from when the last message was posted after which the log will be cleared. Chat room owners now also have the ability to clear the chat of messages.