VOTED: 13,767 total respondents
91% WebTV users
9% PC users
Last week when TalkCity announced its new policy of restricting chat clients and custom IRC
interfaces, we suspected our readers would feel strongly about it. We wanted to get a picture of
how our readers chat, find out just how strongly you felt, and what the implications might
be.
Here are the preliminary results of the Net4TV Voice Chat Poll, with both the questions, and the
percentage of the users who answered each way. All those these are not the final results, they
have been purged of duplicate votes and WebTV users and PC users identified.
The Importance of Chat
How Often Do You Chat
71%
16%
4.7%
4.1%
2%
0.6%
1.4%
Daily
Several x/wk
Weekly
2-3 x/mo
Rarely
Never*
NA
When You Chat, How Much Time Do You Spend In a Day
1.6%
4.7%
9.8%
9.4%
23%
50%
1.4%
<15 min
15-30 min
30-60 min
1 hr
2 hrs
3+ hrs
NA
How Important Is Chat to Your Use of WebTV or the Internet
2.1%
2.9%
9.2%
27%
58%
0.5%
Not at all
A Little
Somewhat
Very
Extremely
NA
The answers to these questions indicate that the respondents are largely what could be described
as the "heavy chatters." From other Net4TV surveys, chat appears to be extremely important to
about 25% of our readers (or general poll respondents), and of some importance to another 25 -
30%.
Feelings About Talk City
How Do You Feel About Talk City (in general)
31%
36%
10%
18%
2.4%
1.7%
0.5%
Love
Like
OK
Problems
Terrible
Never Go
NA
How Do You Feel About Talk City's Decision to Eliminate IRC Clients
1.7%
7%
16.6%
18%
33%
21%
2.7%
Love
OK
Disappointed
Angry
Very Angry
Goodbye!
NA
How Would You Feel If TalkCity Were the Only Place You Could Chat?
20.6%
19.2%
11.6%
14%
12.6%
6.8%
13.5%
1.8%
OK
Disappointed
Upset
Angry
Furious
Goodbye Chat
Goodbye WebTV
NA
Overall, most respondents to our survey seem to be fairly pleased with TalkCity, but are very much
less pleased with their decision to eliminate the custom chat interfaces. Other problems that
surfaced were: Not being able to stay connected - 81.7% (WebTV users), 70% (PC users) Not being allowed to enter rooms not "approved by WebTV" - 36.8% (WebTV users) Being kicked or banned without cause - 44.8% (WebTV users), 34.8% (PC users)23.1% of WebTV users, and 34.5% of PC users responding reported that they have a
homepage located on TalkCity.
The Importance of Custom Chat Interfaces or Clients
How Important Are Custom Interfaces Or Personal IRCs to Your Chatting
12.4%
6.6%
17%
19.6%
42%
2.7%
Not at all
A Little
Somewhat
Very
Extremely
NA
How Would You Feel If WebTV Eliminated Custom IRCs (on All Servers)
10%
13%
8%
16.8%
24%
7%
18.6%
2.2%
OK
Disappointed
Upset
Angry
Furious
Goodbye Chat
Goodbye WebTV
NA
55% of the WebTV respondents, and 66% of the PC respondents, use either custom chat interfaces (in
the case of WebTV) or their own chat clients (in the case of PCs), and the freedom to use those
was clearly important to our respondents.
In fact, as far as WebTV users go, the percentage of respondents who are upset (beyond the "mildly
disappointed") about TalkCity's decision and those who would be "Angry" or worse if WebTV were to
eliminate the capability to make them at all is significantly larger than the percentage of users
who use them. Likewise, 54% of the WebTV users who responded only chat at Talk City, but
less than 21% say it would be "OK by me" if TalkCity were the only place they could chat.
Clearly, having the ability to choose where and how one will chat (and, from inference, do other
things on the Net) is important to users, even if they don't demonstrate it by going outside of
the recommended chat site.
Net4TV Voice received over 10,000 comments, and will be reviewing these, further analysing the
data, and will tell you more about what you told us in a later issue.
