Editing Virtual community (section)

===Online chat rooms===
[[File:Xaric screen shot.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|An example of an IRC chat session on Xaric, a text-based client. Shown are two IRC channels and a private conversation.]]

{{Original research|section|date=January 2016}}

Shortly after the rise of interest in message boards and forums, people started to want a way of communicating with their "communities" in real time. The downside to message boards was that people would have to wait until another user replied to their posting, which, with people all around the world in different time frames, could take a while. The development of online [[chat room]]s allowed people to talk to whoever was online at the same time they were. This way, messages were sent and online users could immediately respond.

The original development by [[CB Simulator|CompuServe CB]] hosted forty channels in which users could talk to one another in real time. The idea of forty different channels led to the idea of chat rooms that were specific to different topics. Users could choose to join an already existent chat room they found interesting, or start a new "room" if they found nothing to their liking. Real-time chatting was also brought into virtual games, where people could play against one another and also talk to one another through text. Now, chat rooms can be found on all sorts of topics, so that people can talk with others who share similar interests. Chat rooms are now provided by [[Internet Relay Chat]] (IRC) and other individual websites such as [[Yahoo!|Yahoo]], [[MSN]], and [[AOL]].

Chat room users communicate through text-based messaging. Most chat room providers are similar and include an input box, a message window, and a participant list. The input box is where users can type their text-based message to be sent to the providing server. The server will then transmit the message to the computers of anyone in the chat room so that it can be displayed in the message window. The message window allows the conversation to be tracked and usually places a time stamp once the message is posted. There is usually a list of the users who are currently in the room, so that people can see who is in their virtual community.

Users can communicate as if they are speaking to one another in real life. This "simulated reality" attribute makes it easy for users to form a virtual community, because chat rooms allow users to get to know one another as if they were meeting in real life. The individual "room" feature also makes it more likely that the people within a chat room share a similar interest; an interest that allows them to bond with one another and be willing to form a friendship.<ref>{{cite web|last=Phelps|first=Alan|title=How Chat Rooms Work|publisher=Smartcomputing.com|date=11 July 2010|url=http://www.smartcomputing.com/articles/archive/R0502/18R02/18R02.pdf|access-date=11 July 2010|archive-date=25 February 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120225044723/http://www.smartcomputing.com/articles/archive/R0502/18R02/18R02.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/social-networking/information/chat-room.htm|title=HowStuffWorks: How Chat Rooms Work|author=Roos, Dave|date=11 July 2010|access-date=23 August 2010|archive-date=15 August 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100815072450/http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/social-networking/information/chat-room.htm|url-status=live}}</ref>