My experience had been that IRC was an extremely powerful program. IRC now boasts 20,000 users, 6,000 channels and at least three major subnets Web Chat is the norm for the hundreds of Web sites, cafes, and hangouts if you have the computing power thereĪre clients (programs) for 3D chat worlds and more and more companies are offering Netscape plug-ins which enable chatting, both voice and text. The choice for the new chat user is pretty amazing. Where e-mail is almost an anchronism, and where the World Wide Web has become the Internet for many new migrants to the 'net.

So I thought I would have another look at chatting in today's graphical virtual world There were MUD's and MOO's but no-one had heard of Web Chat, CoolTalk, Typing text on a Unix screen, albeit interactively with others who (usually) turned out to be male science students.

Two yearsĪgo, the largest chat system, Internet Relay Chat (or IRC) had a couple of thousand avid followers, and the Web was barely populated.

At that time I likened chat systems to 'oases' or 'pitstops', where the information forlorn could rest their weary bones and put their feet up to relax. Way back in 1994, I wrote an article about chatting on the Internet (YC, Octġ994). CHAT SYSTEMS OF THE INTERNET CHAT SYSTEMS ON THE INTERNET - pitstops of the Superhighway

Christian mirc chat