

Ask HN: Why do popular sites don't have chat? - arisAlexis

I am talking about stack overflow, github or other projects that have a large community. I am building a community kind of project and I am wondering if there is a specific decision from these sites not to include chat for x,y reasons between their users. It is technically fairly easy so there must be something else. Isn&#x27;t it a good incentive to keep your users online for more time?
======
johnloeber
Why would they need to include chat services? External chat clients already
exist, and for the _important_ internal messages, there are systems for
communication:

\- StackExchange has a comment system, as well as a Meta discussion board, as
well as chatrooms for every StackExchange site

\- GitHub has commit messages and issue tracking, as well as e-mail addresses
listed for contact, and in-project e-mail threads

So these sites really do have chat, just not the Facebook-Messenger type of
chat that you might be thinking of.

