When Bonfire went live last month we had high hopes for this tiny startup which planned to bring instant messaging to the Twitter web site, Facebook-chat style.

With this IM presence, now you would know if your Twitter friends were online or not. The horror…

Except, it didn’t work.

Bonfire crashed under the weight of TechCrunch’s readership and we didn’t hear from them again for some time. Well, it happens.

But, boys and girls, Bonfire is back and appears to be working just fine. Unless of course this post kills it again in 3…2..1…

Meanwhile, assuming it works, Bonfire may end up something Twitter would take an interest in – it makes the site itself much stickier, and that means ad dollars for Twitter.

Their plug-in for Chrome and Safari lets you invite friends, but a Twitter user has to follow and be followed by the same person in order to IM them over Bonfire. Direct Messaging remains unaffected.

Check it out and leave your impressions in the comments.