If you look at the list of suggestions submitted by Hschooler.net members, you’ll quickly see that the most requested feature is Chat or Instant Messaging. It has been suggested by four different members.

We want you to know that we aren’t ignoring these requests.

However, there are a couple of major issues that we need to deal with before implementing Chat or IM on Hschooler.net.

The first is fairly tactical. The web, by it’s nature, is a static, page-based medium. You load a web page and it sits there waiting for you to do something. Since the web was introduced back in the early 1990s, many advances have enabled the web to become more dynamic. Flash and Javascript are probably the two most important technologies in enabling a web page to be interactive without being reloaded or without going to a different page. However, it’s tricky to implement these technologies, especially in a way that doesn’t either overload the web browser or overload the web server.

Thankfully, others have developed Chat/IM plugins for the platform we use for Hschooler.net. However, these are designed to work with newer versions of the platform than we’re currently running with Hschooler.net. I expect we’ll upgrade the platform this summer, which will allow us to try out different Chat/IM plugins and hopefully implement one that meets our needs.

The second issue is more strategic. What sets Hschooler.net apart from other online social networks is our focus on creating a safe environment that is honoring to God and is family-centered, recognizing the God-given authority of parents. As with other tools in Hschooler.net, it’s important to us to give parents the ability to set the boundaries for their family members. Some family members may not yet be ready for IM/Chat, while others clearly are and should be given significant freedom.

But with Chat and Instant Messaging, there’s more than just the trustworthiness of the family member involved. We’ve all heard horror stories of Internet chat and instant messaging problems that threaten the safety of our families. None of us at Hschooler.net want to have our service become part of another horror story. We believe that giving parents the option of complete visibility into the conversations their family members are having through Hschooler.net is an important part of maintaining our mission and our differentiation.

That means that, once we find an existing package that provides the functionality that we think our users want, we will still need to invest significant development time into making our Chat/IM implementation Hschooler-ready.

In the meantime, we appreciate your patience! Please continue to send us your feedback, suggestions, and ideas.