From TheBestLinks.com
A chat room is an online forum where people can chat online (talk by broadcasting messages to people on the same forum in real time). Sometimes these forums are moderated (where only certain people are allowed to speak), but usually not.
Chat systems include Internet Relay Chat (where rooms are called "channels"), Jabber, and several proprietary systems implemented on the Microsoft Windows and Java platforms.
Some chat rooms go beyond text messages, and incorporate 2D and 3D graphics and avatars. One example of a 2D chat room is The Palace.
Other chat rooms are based on worldwide communities coming together in one place where you can literally chat with people from anywhere around the world e.g. Face Meet (http://www.facemeet.com)
Lesser known is the UNIX based talker and the French Minitel.
Chat rooms are often confused (especially by the popular media) with discussion groups, which are similar but do not take place in real time and are usually run over the World Wide Web.
Recently much chat room and instant messaging technology has begun to merge as the dominance of the big three instant messaging providers (AOL, Yahoo, and MSN) have tied chat rooms directly into their instant messaging interfaces. This centralization trend is likely to continue to dominate the chat world as these providers begin to merge their services and cooperate in their IM and chat protocols.
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