Time to enter the browser wars...

Apologies to everyone affected by the lack of IM Chat on Youniverse at the moment - it is something the team here are working on.

For anyone who can't wait until we've resolved the issue, there is something you can do. This problem seems to be affecting Safari, Internet Explorer and older versions of Firefox - so you could try downloading a new browser. The newest version of Mozilla Firefox and Google's Chrome come highly recommended and the Chat function works on them.  If you don't want to change (which is fair enough), then it's still worth checking you have the most up-to-date version of your choice of browser.

If you want to compare browsers before you choose a new one to use, then you should check out David Naylor's blog posts (here and here) to help your decision -  he compares starting-up times and page loading times for versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera and Chrome on some of the web's most popular sites (Facebook, Wikipedia, Youtube, MSN and eBay).  

Oh, and if you're not sure what a browser even is, you're not alone, as this TechCrunch article and brilliant Google video show...