Around 2000, the domestic Internet was still in its infancy, when there was no Weibo, no online shopping, and no WeChat and QQ. In addition to visiting news portals such as Sohu and NetEase, the most used internet is our protagonist today - network chat rooms.
A brief history of chat rooms
The first known chat room was created by Murray Turoff, the founder of computer-mediated communications, a system known as EMISARI. EMISARI allows up to 10 regional offices to chat live online via dedicated lines.
In 1973, the first public online chat room, Talkomatic, was born, introducing the concept of "channel" for the first time. Users can join any channel and chat with all users in the channel.
It's fun to use Talkomatic to chat, unlike chat rooms today, which divides the computer screen into 5 zones, each of which belongs to one user. When a user enters a text message, it can be displayed on other users' computers in real time. Because of this limitation, each channel can only accommodate up to 5 users.
Each channel in a web chat room usually has a topic around which users discuss and communicate. With the development of network technology, in addition to the traditional text chat outdoor, there are also audio chat rooms, video chat rooms, some chat rooms also use virtual reality technology, users can create their own rooms, other users can freely enter and exit, chat with all users in the room.
Chat room chaos
Chat rooms belong to the early products of the Internet, although they were loved by netizens at that time, but because of their openness, the quality of netizens and other reasons, there were many problems.
Take QQ chat room as an example, the name of one of the hottest chat rooms in qq chat rooms was very vulgar, some chat rooms also have the function of grabbing wheat, many people often grab wheat to advertise, or carry out indiscriminate insults.
Internet chat rooms are also the concentration of black and gray industries. Some registration software can hang 100,000 accounts at the same time, these accounts can enter different channels, user names, personal profiles are hidden illegal content.
To this end, relevant departments have jointly carried out special actions to rectify the vulgarity of the Internet. The QQ chat room was officially shut down in 2009.
Chat room status
Today, chat rooms have been replaced by "group chats", but instead of disappearing, they have found a different path and become one of the most important services of the modern Internet.
For example, in the live broadcasting industry, multi-anchor linkage is actually a chat room function that plays a role. Another example is the KTV online song order function, that is, friends in a KTV room join a chat room to order songs. In the fields of gaming, social networking, online education, and office collaboration, chat rooms can be seen, but they are not as simple and rude as before.
With the development of the Internet, chat rooms are no longer a simple chat system, and their built-in functions are quite rich. It supports both single chat and group chat, and also supports text, pictures, voice, video, attachments and other full types of message formats. In addition, it also has a content moderation function, which timely controls information related to pornography, terrorism, extremist religiousism, advertising, screen brushing, and abuse in the chat room.
Some instant messaging service providers also provide some advanced features, such as instant burning after reading, message recall, and so on.
The web chat room is a memory of a generation, and although it is no longer glamorous, it is still playing a big role, but our feelings are not as obvious as before.