A chat room is a virtual place on the Internet where people from all walks of life from around the world can get together in one place and textually chat with one another. The only two things a person needs to connect to a chat room are a computer and a internet connection of any speed. There are, however, Chat Rooms that require client programs, as with IRC (Internet Relay Chat).

The term chat room was coined by the mass media as the World Wide Web began to take off and enter into many peoples’ households. Various Internet service providers such as America Online were some of the primary providers of Chat Rooms during the early days of Internet in the home. While it was originally said that a chat room required synchronous conferencing, its definition has expanded to include all kinds of real time online chat, including instant messaging, graphical social environments, and asynchronous conferencing (forums and online bulletin boards).

Chat rooms are created to hold discussions about any topic. Some of the most common topics include: sports, politics, entertainment and sexuality. However, there are Chat Rooms in existence for practically any topic any person would want to talk about.

Chat rooms began as a text based environment for people to communicate with each other and has since expanded to include voice and video as well as three dimensional avatars which represent you in a computer based world. Although basic text based Chat Rooms are largely becoming extinct, there are still quite a few still in existence. They are quickly becoming replaced by more exciting text based Chat Rooms which feature picture avatars or various games you can play while you chat.

One of the newest types of Chat Rooms allow the user to enroll in an entire virtual world. Owing their history to expansive massively multiplayer online games, these new virtual Chat Rooms (graphical multi-user environments) feature a 3D or 2D environment where people are free to make their own characters or avatars which represent them in the virtual world. Many of these virtual Chat Rooms, such as Second Life, are free of charge. Many members choose to spend real world money to purchase costumes and other virtual items. With graphical multi-user environments, you are free to develop your character however you choose and you can even create your own home away from home in the virtual world provided you are willing to buy the necessary pieces.

Chat room etiquette

Because Chat Rooms are place where so many different types of people come together to communicate with one another, certain rules need to be in place to keep the peace. Nearly all of the larger Chat Rooms are constantly moderated for any offensive activity, but quite a few smaller Chat Rooms lack such moderation and it is therefore up to the users to be sure that no offensive activities take place.

Many Chat Rooms restrict offensive language including obscenities, racial slurs, and sexual terms that may be offensive to certain users. Any type of advertising, flooding the same word or words over and over again, and spamming are also frowned upon. Most users will be banned from the chat room for doing such activities.

If you are visiting an online chat room that is not moderated, report any of the above activities to whoever runs the site you are using. Being active in a chat community, you enjoy can greatly enhance the chatting environment for everyone in the chat room, so it is important to be proactive with policing the rules – even if you are not a chat room moderator yourself.