Chat room

The term chat room, or chatroom, is primarily used to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. The term can thus mean any technology ranging from real-time online chat and online interaction with strangers (e.g., online forums) to fully immersive graphical social environments.

The primary use of a chat room is to share information via text with a group of other users. Generally speaking, the ability to converse with multiple people in the same conversation differentiates chat rooms from instant messaging programs, which are more typically designed for one-to-one communication. The users in a particular chat room are generally connected via a shared interest or other similar connection, and chat rooms exist catering for a wide range of subjects. New technology has enabled the use of file sharing and webcam to be included in some programs. This can be considered a chat room.

History

The first online chat system was called Talkomatic, created by Doug Brown and David R. Woolley in 1973 on the PLATO System at the University of Illinois. It offered several channels, each of which could accommodate up to five people, with messages appearing on all users' screens character-by-character as they were typed. Talkomatic was very popular among PLATO users into the mid-1980s. In 2014 Brown and Woolley released a web-based version of Talkomatic.

Chat Room (novel)

Chat Room is a thriller novel that was published in Australia in 2006. It is the most recent work from Australian author Barbara Biggs.

Plot

A young girl aged 13, Samantha, is extremely lonely after moving from Sydney to Melbourne. Both of her parents work long hours and she starts getting interested in chat rooms, where she meets new friends. While in the chat rooms she stumbles across a guy named Robin. He pretends to be 17, though he is really 27, and makes Sam feel special. He is charming, smart, romantic and good-looking.

Robin tells Sam that they have to wait for a while before he can tell her his final secret, which she does not realise is his age. Eventually he lets her know that he is 27, which upsets her. After 10 days of stress and depression, she goes back online and asks to talk to him. He answers her and they confess to liking each other, then they decide to meet. She goes to meet him and finds him attractive. They go for a walk.

While Sam is away, Erica, her babysitter, realises Sam is missing and finds the emails from Robin. She calls the police and they set out to find her. Robin is caught and Sam is told what happened. Robin has been to court several times on child sexual abuse charges and has been let go on all charges before now because there was a lack of evidence. Now Robin is taken in by the police and will be sent to prison.

Chat Room (film)

Chat Room is a 2002 American comedy film directed by Barry Bowles, and starring Brian Hooks. The plot revolves around a bet between four high-school friends; whoever brings the best-looking woman to their ten-year high school reunion wins $50,000.

Plot

Most people want to have a good-looking date for their high school reunion, but four guys with more at stake than just pride scramble to find the right girl for the occasion in this comedy. Max (Hooks), Drew (Darryl Brunson), and Jelly Roll (Christopher Richards) have been close friends since high school. Shortly after graduation, they made a bet — each man threw 50 dollars into a pot, and it was decided whoever brought the best-looking woman to their ten-year high school reunion would get all the money. Ten years down the line, the guys discover that after ten years of smart investing, the two hundred bucks has become a whopping 50,000 dollars, but as their reunion looms on the horizon, none of them has a girlfriend, or even a steady date. With that much money at stake, all three men (as well as J-Ron, their arrogant teammate from the high school football team, and the fourth person in on the bet) are eager to find a sexy woman with an evening to spare. The three of them end up searching for the perfect girl on the internet, visiting chat rooms in search of an available knockout. It isn't long before they realize that truth in advertising isn't all that common in the online dating game.