Web 2.0 chess sites abound

July 17, 2007 | Matt Marshall | Comments | |

chess.jpgWe’ve been doing fine with Yahoo Chess.

It has everything we want. It provides a quick online chess experience without requiring a download. It provides a way to upload an image for a profile, an IM chat box to communicate with our opponent (and others who want to sit in), and an ongoing tally of our chess ranking score as we win and lose games.

Yet other companies are offering new social networking features, hoping to pick up users. First, there’s Chess.com, owned by a Stanford MBA grad, and which offering things like profiles, blogs, video sharing and email. It hits you with a request to invite friends during registration. Last week, it introduced a way for people to play chess without being online at the same time — an email tells you they have moved, and you log on and make your move, etc.

And today, another company, Chesspark, of West Palm Beach, Fl., announced it has raised $1 million in a angel round of funding. Unlike Chess.com, Chesspark doesn’t hit you from the outset with a process to engage you in networking activities. We registered and found ourselves playing a game in seconds. However, the company said it will be going through some changes later this year.

Jon Callaghan of True Ventures, Burnt Norton Inc. and Eaglebrook School provided the funding. Co-founder Jack Moffitt said he has more than 100,000 users already enrolled in the company’s beta test.

There’s not a lot of innovation here, as far as we can see. However, chess is an amazingly popular game, so perhaps these companies can draw a relatively small portion of users and still make money by offering premium features and/or ads.

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Matt Marshall is editor and CEO of VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter at @mmarshall, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Bob C.
    I stopped playing Yahoo Chess when half the players would quit midway through, or stall until their time left out. A little bit of quality control would go a long way. I hope either of these two sites address that; perhaps create a trust rating. Perhaps that its a social network will create a greater penalty for abusing the system.
  • Thanks for the perspective Matt! Fortunately, you are not really the target audience. You'd have to really understand the chess world to see why Yahoo! Chess is a disaster. You can shoot pool on yahoo too, but that doesn't mean yahoo is a pool-player's site.

    As for innovation, social networking isn't a new phenomenon, but it is in the chess world ;) Plus, chess.com was developed on $25k with 2.5 guys...