What is a chat room?

A quick search on the internet will turn up millions of links to chat rooms. Where do they come from? Many people would be surprised to learn that these rooms are called websites. While it is possible to find similar-sounding names like chat rooms, they are not all necessarily the same. There are dozens of different types and sub-types of chat websites.

To simplify things, the term chat room refers to any kind of virtual synchronized online conversation, sometimes even fully synchronized offline. The term chat room can thus imply any number of things, ranging from real-time chat and online conversation with strangers, to fully immersive virtual visual environments where everyone appears in front of a similar screen. This is one way of thinking about them, but they can also be multiplayer online role-playing (MMORPG) games, discussion board, or social networking website. Some rooms are multiplayer free for all, where all the players are in the same room, while others are restricted to a small group of specific friends. There are also chat rooms that use a hybrid model, where some rooms are separated from the main server and populated only by a handful of regular players.

When you talk about what is a chat room, you have to be careful about the terminology. Often, they are used interchangeably. Chat rooms are not always separate platforms; sometimes they are part of the same website or used in conjunction with other online services. One example of this is a forum, which is essentially a site where people can talk to each other about a specific topic, often with the option of signing up for an email address in case they have questions or comments. The same type of online chat is often used in social networking websites.

A typical chat room has multiple visual display panels for showing chat messages, such as the message boards and forums. Sometimes the message boards are combined with video displays or images. Often, text chat boxes appear below these graphical displays. In some cases, a small number of chat clients are connected to a single visual display panel, and sometimes there are separate chat clients and chat rooms for each different type of media.

Since the advent of online user groups or chats, chat rooms have become much more than a place where people talk about their pet. There are now professional groups with regular meetings, game groups with monthly leagues, and even religious groups with daily prayer sessions. There are professional networks with hundreds of thousands of members. And these groups are very visible to people who search for chat rooms on the Internet. So the question "What is a chat room?"

Another popular use of a chat room is online game-play. Virtually every major online computer game has chat rooms, as well as individual chat rooms for individual players. Dozens of these multiplayer games have elaborate and entertaining chat menus, which allow players to communicate and interact with one another.

These social networking sites make it possible for many people to share their hobby and recreational activities. Some of these websites, such as Facebook and MySpace, offer entire chat rooms, or a single conversation area, for users to interact with one another. On the Internet, the term "chat room" can also refer to an informal chat that happens between Internet users in which no real monetary compensation is exchanged. These can happen all the time, on chat boards, message boards, and forums devoted to particular interests, subjects, or other subjects.

What is a chat room? It's a new term, that may not be familiar to you. But the Internet has changed the way we do business and perhaps will change the way we do communication in the future.