One of the hardest things I’ve found about working from home is the lack of the normal socialization that you get at a traditional job.

I hang out on Twitter most of the day, but it’s difficult to have back and forth conversations with several people at once. I looked into starting an IRC channel on Freenode, but quickly learned how much of a pain managing one can be (and IRC clients are horrendous), so I started searching for web-based IRC alternatives. Most of the services out there are geared towards teams of people and are priced per user so that the more people you want in the chat, the more money you have to pay. Not really ideal for what I was looking for.

This is why I was thrilled to stumble across JabbR.net, which is based on an open source chat application built on ASP.net with the same name. It has a minimilist interface that reminds me of the 37Signals’s applications and seems to have everything you need to chat it up with a few friends during the day (and who doesn’t need another way to procrastinate?).

I’ll be hanging out in the founders channel most of the day from now on. If you’re interested in startups or have your products, stop by and say hi. I think we can get a nice little community of folks if enough people join and participate every now and then.

Check it out: Join the founders channel on JabbR.net