HexChat is a discontinued Internet Relay Chat client and is a fork of XChat. It has a choice of a tabbed document interface or tree interface, support for multiple servers, and numerous configuration options. Both command-line and graphical versions are available.
IRC is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat and data transfer, including file sharing.
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 to fully immersive graphical social environments.
Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate (real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involving simple text message exchanges, modern IM applications and services tend to also feature the exchange of multimedia, emojis, file transfer, VoIP, and video chat capabilities.
ChatZilla is an IRC client that is part of SeaMonkey. It was previously an extension for Mozilla-based browsers such as Firefox, introduced in 2000. It is cross-platform open source software which has been noted for its consistent appearance across platforms, CSS appearance customization and scripting.
Online chat is any kind of communication over the Internet that offers a real-time transmission of text messages from sender to receiver. Chat messages are generally short in order to enable other participants to respond quickly. Thereby, a feeling similar to a spoken conversation is created, which distinguishes chatting from other text-based online communication forms such as Internet forums and email. Online chat may address point-to-point communications as well as multicast communications from one sender to many receivers and voice and video chat, or may be a feature of a web conferencing service.
Yahoo! Messenger was an advertisement-supported instant messaging client and associated protocol provided by Yahoo!. Yahoo! Messenger was provided free of charge and could be downloaded and used with a generic "Yahoo ID" which also allowed access to other Yahoo! services, such as Yahoo! Mail. The service also offered VoIP, file transfers, webcam hosting, a text messaging service, and chat rooms in various categories.
iChat is a discontinued instant messaging software application developed by Apple Inc. for use on its Mac OS X operating system. It supported instant text messaging over XMPP/Jingle or OSCAR (AIM) protocol, audio and video calling, and screen-sharing capabilities. It also allowed for local network discussion with users discovered through Bonjour protocols.
The fireside chats were a series of evening radio addresses given by Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, between 1933 and 1944. Roosevelt spoke with familiarity to millions of Americans about recovery from the Great Depression, the promulgation of the Emergency Banking Act in response to the banking crisis, the 1936 recession, New Deal initiatives, and the course of World War II. On radio, he quelled rumors, countered conservative-dominated newspapers, and explained his policies directly to the American people. His tone and demeanor communicated self-assurance during times of despair and uncertainty. Roosevelt was regarded as an effective communicator on radio, and the fireside chats kept him in high public regard throughout his presidency. Their introduction was later described as a "revolutionary experiment with a nascent media platform."
Microsoft Comic Chat is a graphical IRC client created by Microsoft, first released with Internet Explorer 3.0 in 1996. Comic Chat was developed by Microsoft Researcher David Kurlander, with Microsoft Research's Virtual Worlds Group and later a group he managed in Microsoft's Internet Division.
Google Talk was an instant messaging service that provided both text and voice communication. The instant messaging service was variously referred to colloquially as Gchat, Gtalk, or Gmessage among its users.
HipChat was a web service for internal private online chat and instant messaging. As well as one-on-one and group/topic chat, it also featured cloud-based file storage, video calling, searchable message-history and inline-image viewing. The software was available to download onto computers running Windows, Mac or Linux, as well as Android and iOS smartphones and tablets. Since 2014, HipChat used a freemium model, as much of the service was free with some additional features requiring organizations to pay per month. HipChat was launched in 2010 and acquired by Atlassian in 2012. In September 2017, Atlassian replaced the cloud-based HipChat with a new cloud product called Stride, with HipChat continuing on as the client-hosted HipChat Data Center.
WeChat or Weixin in Chinese ; lit. 'micro-message') is a Chinese instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018 with over 1 billion monthly active users. WeChat has been described as China's "app for everything" and a super-app because of its wide range of functions. WeChat provides text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video conferencing, video games, mobile payment, sharing of photographs and videos and location sharing.
Google Hangouts was a cross-platform instant messaging (IM) service developed by Google. It originally was a feature of Google+, becoming a standalone product in 2013, when Google also began integrating features from Google+ Messenger and Google Talk into Hangouts. Google then began integrating features of Google Voice, its Internet telephony product, into Hangouts, stating that Hangouts was designed to be "the future" of Voice.
Telegram Messenger, commonly known as Telegram, is a cloud-based, cross-platform, social media and instant messaging (IM) service. It was originally launched for iOS on 14 August 2013 and Android on 20 October 2013. It allows users to exchange messages, share media and files, and hold private and group voice or video calls as well as public livestreams. It is available for Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux, and web browsers. Telegram offers end-to-end encryption in voice and video calls, and in optional private chats, which Telegram calls Secret Chats.
OpenAI is an American artificial intelligence (AI) research organization founded in December 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco, California. Its stated mission is to develop "safe and beneficial" artificial general intelligence (AGI), which it defines as "highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work". As a leading organization in the ongoing AI boom, OpenAI is known for the GPT family of large language models, the DALL-E series of text-to-image models, and a text-to-video model named Sora. Its release of ChatGPT in November 2022 has been credited with catalyzing widespread interest in generative AI.
Google Chat is a communication service developed by Google. Initially designed for teams and business environments, it has since been made available for general consumers. It provides direct messaging, group conversations, and spaces, which allow users to create and assign tasks and share files in a central place in addition to chatting. It can be accessed through its own website and app or through the Gmail website and app.
Libera Chat, stylized as Libera.Chat, is an IRC network for free and open-source software projects. It was founded on 19 May 2021 by former Freenode staff members, after Freenode was taken over by Andrew Lee, founder of Private Internet Access.
Proximity chat or spatial chat or positional chat is type of internet platform that overlays video teleconferencing software on a virtual world environment, so that users can navigate freely and have conversations among small groups.
ChatGPT is a generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by OpenAI and launched in 2022. It is based on the GPT-4o large language model (LLM). ChatGPT can generate human-like conversational responses, and enables users to refine and steer a conversation towards a desired length, format, style, level of detail, and language. It is credited with accelerating the AI boom, which has led to ongoing rapid investment in and public attention to the field of artificial intelligence. Some observers have raised concern about the potential of ChatGPT and similar programs to displace human intelligence, enable plagiarism, or fuel misinformation.
