• direct promotion of products/services
• cutting spending on customer service

An online community generally requires careful planning. Here's how to start:

• balance your business strategy with the audience's desire for connection
• get GOOD moderators
• start with an incentive-filled promotion to get people to visit the chat room
• respond to customer comments quickly

Chat rooms are already used effectively as online classrooms. In classes I have taken as a member of America Online, the following conventions were followed:

• Each class was logged, and the log file made available for downloading and review afterwards.
• Administrative information was communicated first, as often happens in a live classroom.
• A library was established for files students can download (e.g. homework assignments).
• A message board was established for collaboration between class meetings.
• The question and answer protocol was as follows:
  • student types a question mark
  • instructor calls on student's screen name
  • student acknowledges when question is answered
• The instructor's lectures were prepared in advance and entered automatically via macros (that's a great deal of fast typing otherwise!).

It's important to have the leader of a class or meeting maintain control in this environment, because

1. It's too easy to interrupt the flow of lecture or discussion.
2. It's too difficult to follow more than one thread at a time.
3. People who use chat rooms tend to be used to utter chaos. :-)

But you can readily see that third-party chat rooms can be used for profit as well as fun.

Here is an example of a portion of a lecture being delivered via a chat room: