Instant messaging or IM is a sub-category of chat rooms and is becoming very popular and trendy in now days. It can be defined as a form of communication between two or more people that use typed text which is connected over the internet. IM may commonly not be accepted as traditional chat room systems because of the use of private communication between persons rather than a room with an amount of people open to participate and also the use and combination of various multimedia elements like video, audio conferencing apart from the text.

Misunderstandings and confusion may also occur in an instant messaging program bearing in mind that it is more or less like a chat room environment.

IM may also cause peoples problems to their personal life.

Another disadvantage of IM software and online chat in general is that students spend less on their own to come up with solutions. Instead, they repeatedly ask their instructor questions without exploring their subject much on their own.

I also agree with the author’s aspect and believe that student become passive observers rather than active and explorers. They should explore their subject and produce solutions of their own, instead of expecting their teachers to do everything for them on behalf. A good solution may be if students are given the opportunity to start an IM conversation with other students and set each other questions to answer through interaction.

Some people agree that the lack of messaging standard where the major IM carriers do not incorporate each other.

However, this is not true. By the time Trillian Inc. released “Trillian basic” and “Trillian Pro”, now users can add all of their contacts in one application. It does incorporate with the most popular IM firms such as Yahoo!, MSN, AOL and IRC.

A chat room is an important element of computer mediated communication environments. It is an online system where people can join and broadcast messages to people that are in the same room. Chat rooms are designed in a variety of styles from text only messaging systems to 3D systems. The older form of traditional chat rooms that are text-based only variety is the Internet Relay Chat or most popularly called mIRC.

I think that, even though chat rooms are still being used by millions of users in the globe and are a successful element of mediated communication systems; they can lead to abuse amongst youngsters. It is widely known that teenagers and youngsters alike are involved into internet abuse more than anybody else. Especially in chat rooms where membership is not usually required. Sexual abuse and bad behavior in general is becoming an intensive phenomenon in computer mediated communication systems. It is a matter that troubles authorities greatly.
Another way to achieve safety in a chat room may be if for example was monitored 24 hours a day by a ” guard”; perhaps a virtual user what is called in the chat room language “bot” or a special application whose responsibility would be to scan for swearing, scammers, sexual connotations and any other kind of bad behavior and abuse in general. Consequently, it might ban and report users of the above mentioned to local authorities. Thus, enabling a record of increasing or decreasing bad behavior and abuse and any distribution of punishment served to abusive users.

A chat room with a multi-participant usage can sometimes lead to confusion due to the fact that many users are actively participating in a conversation and result in possible misunderstandings between the participant users.

For example: John asks Mark if the deadline is on Thursday. Emily, pops in the conversation and says yes but she didn’t actually respond to John’s question but to Jenny who quoted something before John asked Mark but because Jenny’s message was delayed, she was late in replying back. So John believes that Emily was answering him and thinks that the deadline is indeed on Thursday but then Mark responded to John’s question by saying “No, Next week”. Consequently, John does not pay attention to what Mark says and continues to think that the deadline is for Thursday. This grave mistake can also occur when two users reply at the same time. I believe that chat rooms should be held responsible for mistakes such as these and should take measures against it.