In the never-ending race to be anything better than MySpace, AOL, or Disney, businesses are always looking to innovate their services, and hopefully crap out produce something that seems so fantastical it draws in customers like a hot Russian prostitute giving out free trials. Anyway, as many of us know, one of facebook’s most popular latest innovation is easily the facebook chatbar, which is simply a small bar at the bottom of the page that shows us online friends and new notifications. However, this innovation was so powerful that it defeated Chuck Norris and was crowned the new place to be for instant messaging, marking MSN, AIM, and Yahoo! messangers obsolete in the eyes of many.

However, I get the feeling we’re going to be seeing this concept used on many forums and other social networks within the next one to two years. To state an obvious example, MySpace was quick to ripoff the idea and use it on their own site. However, the chatbar has appeared in a place I’d thought I’d never see it: Youtube.

The Offender in Question

Don’t believe me? Login to Youtube and look for yourself.

Anyway, with companies like Social Engine already creating chatbar plugins for their own products and CometChat introducing such a functionality to Vbulletin, it’s only a matter of time that the concept is practically a prerequisite for any type of community website. Then it’ll be only a matter of time that the concept is worn out and nobody gives a shit any longer.

So what can you do about it? Absolutely nothing. Even if you and everybody else in the world boycotts any new sites that decide to be as innovative, there’s always going to be the idea that their site NEEDS it. Anyway, I’m going to jump far into the future, and when I come out with a forum, it’s going to have an instant messenger styled web-based chat. So it will be like having your own MSN in your browser.

And now I’ve lost any lust to write…