From Facebook to Chess...
Submitted by
Scarian on Tue, 06/17/2008 at 5:07pm.
So I discovered Chess.com through the social networking phenom known as Facebook.
I quite like it here. It's a social networking platform for chessplayers. Quite surprising given the chessplayer stereotype; geeky, male, middle to old aged, balding, overweight, and quite unsociable. For a solitary game, Chess.com has certainly found its niche and is fitting in very nicely.
With reasonable load times, a large database of blogs, articles and past games, and the feature of playing live chess, one wonders how Chess.com sustains itself on advertising and the occasional premium membership.
Do these wonderful features seem a tad too good to be true? I sure think so.
I notice the words 'BETA' in the top left hand corner. What does Alpha involve? Mandatory premium memberships? Or just an innocent 'BETA' version logo, hinting at even more great things to come? Time will tell.
I don't mean to sound so pessimistic or suspicious, I've played on many correspondence chess sites where premium memberships were the only way to achieve glory over the board. Even if you lost to a non-fee paying member, you could still gloat and say: "Hey, at least I love it here enough to pay!" - I guess you can still do that here. Although it might cause a bit of a maturity concern.
I think I'll wait to pay for premium membership until I know what lies in wait for us over the hill. Perhaps Omega for the free features of the site?