There are times when you can't help but sit in front of the computer. You're alone in the house, there's nothing interesting on TV so you killed the picture, and you aren't in the mood to listen to anything on the radio. But you're in the mood for some socializing on the Internet. This is where online chat rooms come in.

The term chat room is used by mass media to refer to any type of synchronous conferencing or even asynchronous conferencing. Also known as chatroom, the term therefore means any technology ranging from online forums and real-time online chats to full-blown graphical social environments.

There are different kinds of chat rooms. There are IRC chat rooms, instant messaging chat rooms, game chat rooms, dating chat rooms, etc.

In the Philippines, the popularity of chat rooms started around the same time they became popular in the rest of the world.

The origin of chat rooms could be traced back to 1974. PLATO System claims their Talkomatic computer program was the first functional chat room in the world. It was purely text-based, and because the world wasn't yet familiar with the idea of an online chat room, the system failed to hit it big.

People began to be more receptive to chat rooms in the 1990s. But by this time a new chat room technology called IRC was the talk of the town. One thing led to another. Before you knew it, it's the 21st century and the IRC has given way to more popular chat systems like Yahoo! and ICQ.

That's the history of the chat room.