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IRC
Online Services & Web Chat
IRC and related chat systems laid the technological foundation for the later
development of proprietary chat systems by online services and websites, described
below:
- Online
services. Several companies run private chat networks on the Internet.
These systems comprise a private space owned by a particular company and only
available to subscribers, unlike IRC which is a common space available
to everybody on the Internet, and so are not covered here.
- Websites. There are several applications and
sites for conducting real-time chat sessions through websites, many identified
in the DMOZ
Chat category. They can be especially useful for purposes like online product
support, conferences, and training. The client programs are often written in Java so
they run in your web browser without a separate program. Because they aren't
standardized open systems, they aren't always as optimized and fast as IRC at
distributing the messages.
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