Adding chat is one of the more fun projects to work on in any web application. Often with development projects, there is a lot of "build this, see if anyone uses it after a month" and relying on metrics to really determine whether the feature that you developed added value or not. The nice thing about all of these real-time channel features is that they provide a level of immediate feedback and a clear picture of usage.
If you want to know who is using your application and how, you will now have a very clear way to check in on the health of your site. Visit some of the most popular polls and see how many people are on and using the chat portions of your application! It also is really fun to open up two browsers and see that instant flow of data simultaneously between multiple windows. Without any further ado, let's start designing...