I think most people just havent realised that what they actually want to do is to chat, there is a technical and social stigma, people already have a web browse

I think most people just havent realised that what they actually want to do is to chat, there is a technical and social stigma, people already have a web browser, just point it to google and getting the help is the same as doing whatever else. As for the technical, I remember the first time trying to get on irc and as a cs undergrad, wondering why the hell it was so complicated, I run an xmpp chatroom and that is only marginally easier, these arent inherent problems with the protocol, just the software around is entirely unusable. facebook / meebo and mibbit are helping overcome this, but it isnt there yet. I have wondered how to solve the problem chat knowledge being unable to persist, even with public chat logs, an answer on a forum etc is still much easier to comprehend for a 3rd party than an irc log, but havent come up with much