When I first started playing bingo online I used to love the chat rooms but after over eight years I have to admit to being more than a little bored of it. It used to be that when you visited any site the rooms were alive with people swapping life stories from a child being born to their impending nuptials but lately all I seem to see is WTG, 1TG, GL etc., that and the chat hosts macros!
This then got me thinking, how many players still participate in the chat other than to post congratulatory comments or moan about “same winners” or how much money they have spent without winning a penny? Personally when I play now, if the option is available, I close chat – I find it tedious with little or nothing to offer me as a player but this could just be me – hence the question, bingo chat, off or on?
Recently I met up with a couple of players from Boyle Bingo at a Dream Idols event who both stated quite categorically that for them it’s the social side of the site that keeps them coming back time and time again. Are they a majority or a minority?
The stalwart bingo fan knows that participating in chat can prove to be quite lucrative thanks to the chat games and quite a few brands offer a Roomie of the Week/Month promotion. These reward those that contribute to the chat, often with the actual hosts voting for the player they think is most deserving of the title. Is this enough though to maintain the community side of things with any brand or do sites now need to be looking at other ways to interact with their players?
As more and more brands incorporate instant win games into the main bingo screen, the chat screen is the feature that is reduced in size to allow this function, another contributory factor to the decline in the social side of online bingo maybe?
I would love to hear what you think – is the bingo chat room dying or is it still the hub of what makes a brand great? Do you close the bingo chat room down if you have the option or are you in there with your fellow roomies sharing a bit of banter?
