Almost Social Networking

I got all excited and decided that I could make my own Google Wave. I started writing code yesterday afternoon and I have a chat client...that works like a very simple chat client. I used AJAX type stuff to post the text in divs. The way(this is ultra tricky, I know) that data is passed between instances is by saving the text to a common text file which is then periodically viewed by the Javascript and posted. It's ultra low tech but it does work. I wonder if I could do it with a web service. Almost certain I could. I learned a lot and it was fun too. Crazy. The thing is web-based, by the way.