Chat Rooms Online
Chat rooms online are a way to connect with people all around the world in real time. A chat room might also refer to chatting on forums, which isn’t real time. Even an instant message on your computer or SMS on your cell phone might be considered chatting. Recent technological advances have also created a way for chat rooms online to provide a full immersive 3D environment, such as services like Second Life or IMVU.
The first ever chat room created on a computer was made by a man named Alexander Trevor who was from Columbus, Ohio. He was an executive of the popular online service CompuServe that had an online chat room way back in 1980. Back then there was no public internet and users of the service would have to dial in using a modem connected to their phone line. Each person logged in would require an additional physical phone line to be connected in the CompuServe office. This was one of the major limitations of chat rooms before the inception of the internet as we know it today.
In 1988 a man named Jarkko Oikarinen started a revolution in chat rooms online by creating internet relay chat, better known as IRC. The first incarnation of this popular chat protocol was created on a BBS in Finland, inspired by the popular BITNET. As the internet began to collect steam in the late 1980s and early 1990s, IRC servers began to pop up around the world, allowing people to connect like never before. IRC is still used to this day and remains the most popular text based online chat rooms.
In the early 1990s instant messaging programs began to gain popularity such as AOL’s popular AIM and other services like ICQ. Instant messages were able to provide a more personal feel than going to a large chat room full of people you didn’t know. It was also a great way to see if your friends or family were online and available to chat with the click of a button. Many instant messenger platforms also allow the creation of chat rooms online you can use to conference multiple people at the same time.
Later on in the mid to late 1990s, as broadband networks such as cable modems and DSL began to be introduced into American homes, video chat became increasingly popular. The new speed available allowed people to videoconference with higher video and audio quality than on traditional dialup internet. For the first time ever, people were able to communicate with video across the world in real time. You could talk to your kids in college and see their smiling faces or show off your new baby to your family. Many of the instant messenger platforms like AIM and Yahoo Chat quickly integrated video chat into their service, allowing you to connect with your buddies like never before.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s we began to see a shift in the use of chat rooms online. They went from primarily being used for chatting with friends to such diverse uses as graphic multi-user environments and gaming with friends online. Many of the popular 3D chat environments will also allow you to chat with text, video or audio, or any combination of the three. This allows you to be more fully immersed in the chat experience, and to share an environment with the people you are communicating with.
Advances in technology have played a huge role in the development of chat rooms online. These technologies have allowed the world to share data and information like never before, creating a huge global community everyone can participate in. Thanks to the internet we now have more choices then ever when it comes to chat rooms online.