For those of us who are shy, online chats are a great way to meet new people without having to overcome that fear of actually talking to someone. They work great in the virtual world, but until now, there’s really been no way to merge them with the real world. ChatSq is a new mobile web service that brings online chats to real places by combining foursquare with a chat room.

Imagine entering a bar, signing into a chat room with other people in the same bar and striking up a conversation with a similarly shy individual. After breaking the ice online, it’s much easier to come face to face with them and initiate a real chat. As ChatSq says on their blog:

While online, we interact everyday with people we don’t know but when it comes to real life, there is this invisible barrier that prevents us from doing the same offline!

ChatSq provides those chat rooms for any venue you can check in to via foursquare using a slick mobile web interface. You can check in directly from the app and begin chatting right away. Sure, typing a full chat on a mobile phone keyboard can be awkward, but the goal is just to help break the ice to facilitate a real meeting, not spend the entire night typing away at each other from across the room.

You can also join a global chatroom or one targeted to nearby users. Adding someone as a friend allows you to initiate private messages back and forth that don’t require you to be logged in to the app to receive them.

Staying logged in to receive messages is probably the biggest drawback to the app. Without a dedicated application, there’s no way for the service to send a push notification when someone is interested in chatting. With the near-silence that’s found at this early stage of the service, it’s unlikely that anyone is willing to sit around with the app open just waiting for someone else who uses the app to check in so they can begin a conversation.

ChatSq is well designed and functions quite smoothly for a web app, although it currently is optimized just for iPhone and Android. Signing up with your foursquare or Facebook account information is fast and easy.

If ChatSq is able to pick up enough users and keep them in the app and involved in chats, it could be a very nice way to help people who are comfortable with meeting people online make those same kind of connections in the real world.

Would you use ChatSq to connect with someone in the same place as you?

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