online chat

Online chat refers to any form of communication over the Internet, whereby people engage in real-time conversations using their computers. This form of communication has represented a giant step forward in the way people connect with each other, and has modified human interactions on virtually all levels.

Participants in online chat will usually use web-hosted free online chat rooms where they can communicate with random people on various topics (from general discussions to niche subjects), or even engage in private chats with other individuals.

Alternately, people can use a software for instant messaging, which allows them to organize a list of friends, have individual chats or group conferences and tightly control their availability. While online chatting usually refers to text-based communications, most of the programs that enable it also offer video communication via webcam and will often have a "call" function that mimics telephone calls.

Over the last decade, chatting has had a huge cultural impact and has shaped our lives in many ways. Aside from helping individuals create an online identity, which may or may not coincide with their real identity, it has influenced our social behavior. Numerous people credit online chatting for encouraging otherwise chronically shy individuals to initialize relationships with their peers, while others claim that chatting can cause social withdrawal in people that would prefer online interactions to real-life ones.

Moreover, online chatting has helped generate an Internet lingo not only for English speakers, but for many other languages as well. This has sometimes been called a whole new language, characterized by shortening words or using acronyms to describe emotional states.

Online chatting is prevalent among adolescents, who tend to easily adapt to new technologies. Most of them use it as a tool for establishing social relations within their community and often beyond. This type of interaction can help entire generations of youth to become more accepting of other cultures and practices, as Internet communication has virtually opened the doors to the rest of the world.

Instant messaging software and online chat rooms can provide the medium for free communication between people living across the world from each other, it can be used to keep contact with relatives and friends, and it can also help strengthen long distance relationships.

Moreover, online chat can help people engage in what may become real life relationships, either romantic or friendships, and it can bring together people with common interests. Undoubtedly, online chatting is one of the most powerful effects of widespread Internet use and continues to influence the lives of hundreds of millions of people, each day.

You'll find bloggers talking about online chat at sites like ncbi.nlm.nih.gov and newmediasocial.com.

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Original Technorati articles tagged “online chat”

• in Technology
  Windows Live Messenger Sent to the Scrap Heap
  Microsoft announce that they are scrapping Windows Live Messenger in favour of Skype
  by cmimanagers / on Nov 7, 2012

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