Online Chatting!

By Nermeen Kamel
JRMC 270 (Online Communication)
Dr. Rasha A. Abdulla
The American University in Cairo
Journalism and Mass Communication Department
Fall 2008


People can chat online via many programs such as MSN, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, Skype as well as chatting rooms available on many websites such as Hotmail, Yahoo or Facebook.
However, each phenomenon of these has its own characteristics, features and uses. And so, they differ from each other in so many ways and people also use them in differently.

MSN and Yahoo Messenger for example are used to communicate with your contacts whenever you want to but you have to have a hotmail acoount to be able to sign up for MSN or a yahoo account to sign up for yahoo messenger. However, the one most important feature in both, is that you get to add or be added by your friends and the people you want to contact only and you the ability to confirm an adding request, and so not anybody can add you. The adding thing happens by clicking on the "Add a contact" button and then you get to write the email of the person you want to add, he/she accepts, and that's it, done.

Messenger is very useful for people who live abroad. They get to communicate with their friends and family by talking online through msn or yahoo. It is very easy for them to agree on a time in which they both would be online and have a talk with each other, exchange news and updates. Also, you can chat via msn and yahoo for hours and hours, at any time and anywhere without any problems. Despite, the extreme simple and easy use of messenger, and its beneficial use of being able to keep contact with your friends abroad, some people do not think its the best idea because it lacks the sense of interaction and expression and tone of voice, because in the end you are just typing words on a screen!

And here comes Skype which is a software that enables people to make telephone calls through the internet for free. But, in order to do such calls with a person, the person also has to have skype downloaded at his end. So if both people have Skype, then they can make calls free of charge. That is a perfect tool of communication for people living abroad, because they now have it all for free. They do not have to type everything they want to say display emotion faces in order to deliver the message to the other person on a screen. Now, they can talk to each other and stay for hours and hours without paying anything.

ICQ is completely different from previously mentioned ways of chatting, because in ICQ, people chat to people they simply do not know. Via ICQ any person can send you a message and start a coversation without even knowing you. People are completely strangers and start to get to know each other starting from the name, age and the gender. And so, the main problem with ICQ is that anybody can just say any name on earth, claim things that are totally untrue and you wouldnt even know it. I think that is why very few people still use it nowadays.

Communicating online is very significant, it facilitates the process of communication and makes it way easier than before. People no longer have to dail a number and try to reach a person through phone calls where actually the person would probably be online somewhere on the Internet.