What is an Internet Chat Room?

An Internet chat room is an online meeting-place that allows users to communicate with other people from around the world in real time. Users sign in using an anonymous log-on name and then type in their messages in a chat window, which can be seen onscreen by everyone else logged in to the chat room. The discussions that result are similar to those that might take place in any social setting, with people joining and leaving at any time; some taking part in more than one conversation, some talking amongst themselves privately and some simply listening in.

Chatrooms are usually named in such as way as to identify the subject matter of the conversation they are intended to promote. There are rooms devoted to a wide variety of topics, ranging from ABBA to zoology - in fact, if you can think of a subject, there's probably a chatroom out there set up to discuss it.

Chat rooms can vary in the way that they look and work; this will depend on the type of software that the chatroom uses. The most basic setup is a text based program, which simply shows the conversation in a text window. 2D visual chat rooms use an avatar (a graphic representation of the user), which can be moved about a graphic background of the 'room'. There are also 3D chat rooms, which as similar to the 2D variety except that they utilise 3D graphics which gives the user a more realistic interaction with the environment. Some of most popular 3D chat rooms allow users to create or 'build' their own spaces.

Whilst many chat rooms are text-based, (users chat to each other through their keyboards), some also incorporate audio and video messaging, using microphones and web-cams, which gives users the opportunity to actually see and hear each other and have live conversations with people from all around the world.