Overview
The Praize Network is a Christian website community where
users can meet, discuss and gather over the Internet, becoming
an opportunity for education and growth. The site focuses
on individuals and organizations, providing family-safe services
and other resources to help users keep updated on news and
connected with other Christians.
Praize Network's focus is on providing services
for Christians across Canada, the United States and beyond.
Some of these features are: search engine, email, message
forums, clubs, events calendar, classifieds, personals,
directories, job search, shopping and instant messaging.
Incorporating IM
Finding a way of delivering value added services, keeping
its community growing, as well as retaining users, were
some of the needs that Praize was experimenting when the
company realized that the incorporation of instant messaging
to its website was a natural step they had to take. "Everyone
was doing it, and we didn't want to stay behind", remembers
Robbie Davidson, CEO/President of Praize Inc.
Requirements
As a website focused on all kinds of users - from novice to experienced - Praize required an easy-to-use instant messenger as well as a powerful and reliable solution that included useful tools.
Something that was identified
as a key requirement for the service was the possibility
of allowing users to communicate with the major public IM
networks (MSN, ICQ, AOL and Yahoo!) that most of these people
were probably already using.
"We studied several
options, because there were many companies offering instant
messaging in the market. And we found Interactive Networks
Inc., which not only offered a really good quality customizable
solution, the Instan-t IM, but also offered it at a very
reasonable price that we could afford", Davidson
assures.
Future
Although many webmasters still can't see the potential of
instant messaging technology, it is already being used in
a large number of companies worldwide, and it is just the
tip of the iceberg of what is to come. "Instant messaging
is an extraordinary technology; it is changing the way we
communicate and interact with each other online. I'm sure
that its future is beyond anyone's imagination", Davidson
concludes.
