November 2, 2001

Conversation can be in real time online

Edi­tors note: This is one of sev­eral columns that I wrote for the Colum­bia Mis­sourian. They were orig­i­nally called Your Dig­i­tal World

Bul­letin board sys­tems and e-mail groups are a great way to get involved in com­mu­ni­ties on the Internet.

People look­ing to take their involve­ment to a new level should con­sider the two best inter­ac­tive ways to con­nect with people.

Chat rooms — Imag­ine all of the chat­ters as being at a great big elec­tronic cock­tail party. You mill about look­ing for inter­est­ing people and con­ver­sa­tions. At a party, people talk­ing about the same topic tend to clus­ter together; online they make up a chat room. If you’ve just entered the chat room you’ll prob­a­bly want to mill about sam­pling bits of con­ver­sa­tion until you find the room that inter­ests you. Once there, many people lean against the dig­i­tal walls and listen in; it’s called lurk­ing. If you’re new to chat you should get to know the people and the topic that the room’s con­vers­ing about before speak­ing up. How­ever, lurk­ing for a long period of time is con­sid­ered impo­lite by other users because you’re taking up a space a poten­tial chat­ter­box could fill.

Many of you may remem­ber the “perverts will snatch my child via a chat room” fear when chat­ting first became big. Those fears are grounded in real­ity. Just as you wouldn’t let chil­dren walk around a strange cock­tail party unat­tended, don’t let them chat alone.

Adults should be wary as well. Many people mis­rep­re­sent them­selves online. It’s part of the allure for some, for others it’s a way to cheat people. No legit­i­mate user will ever, ever, ever ask you for your pass­word or credit card number. Don’t give them out and report the person to whomever is run­ning the chat system.

Amer­ica Online is prob­a­bly the biggest pro­pri­etor of chat rooms, but you can find many Web-​based ones ded­i­cated to gen­eral chat­ting, or rooms on sites about spe­cific topics, just like BBSs.

Instant Mes­sag­ing — If a chat room is like a cock­tail party, then IM is like a telephone.

IM pro­grams, such as ICQ, MSN Instant Mes­sen­ger and AOL Instant Mes­sen­ger run in the back­ground and spring to life when some­one sends a mes­sage or IMs you, just like a tele­phone doesn’t ring until you get a call.

In order for you to IM some­one you need to have his or her screen name or e-mail address and, this is where it gets tricky, he or she needs to be on the same system as you.

Some of the IM pro­grams won’t talk to other ones. Most notably AOL Instant Mes­sen­ger, the most pop­u­lar pro­gram, won’t play nice with other pro­grams. A few new pro­grams such as Tril­lian (www.​ceruleanstu​dios.com) can con­nect with all the pop­u­lar ser­vices. Expect a heated battle over IM inter­op­er­abil­ity in the near future.

IMing has quickly become the hottest thing on the Inter­net, sur­pass­ing chat rooms as the pre­ferred way to get con­nected. I’d sug­gest using chat rooms to find new people and IM to keep in touch with them later, just as you’d use a cock­tail party and a telephone.

Filed under: Technology

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