IRC’s, chat rooms, Messenger Services

IRC's - Internet Relay Chat is a form of real-time internet chat, it is mainly designed for group communcation in discussion forms called channels. However there is also the availablity of one-to-one communcation via private messaging. Unlike chat-rooms there are operators and admins that control the channels.

Chat Rooms are are a popular form of communcation on the internet. It is a text-based message service for groups of people to send instant messages to and from each other. Further developments in chat rooms is also the availablity of audio and visual use, which allows to users to interact with each other alot more personally. There are many different types of chat-rooms from meeting friends to dating chat rooms. However over the last couple years chat-rooms have become an controversial subject, as often suggestions of safety and inapropriate use of chat-rooms has caused many people and perhaps more so parents to have negative attachment to the subject.

Messenger Services are simular to chat rooms in terms of instant chat but are mostly used in one-to-one conversations. They also tend to be conversations between friends and people that the users know as oppose to strangers and tend to mainly be used by the younger generation.

I use a Messenger Service called MSN, quite a popular service used by many of my friends. MSN allows you the choice of who you add to your list of friends and privacy settings therefore it is a relatively safe service. I havent much experience with the use of chatrooms and IRC's.