What happened to online chat rooms
A classic online chat room was simple: a page or channel with a topic, a list of nicknames down the side and one long stream of messages that everyone in the room could read and add to. You picked a name, walked in and started typing. For a lot of people that was the first place they ever talked to a stranger online.
Several things wore that format down at the same time. Open rooms are hard to look after: anyone can walk in, so spam, bots and people looking for trouble arrive as easily as everyone else, and keeping a busy room pleasant takes moderators around the clock. Phones changed the habit too. Typing into a fast-scrolling room on a small screen is awkward, and people started chatting inside apps they already had open. Many of the old room sites shrank or closed, and the chatting carried on somewhere else.
Are there still online chat rooms today?
There are. Some old-style room sites still run, and plenty of forums and hobby communities keep a chat room for their members. What changed is where most chatting with a crowd happens now:
- Community apps with servers and channels. The closest thing to the old rooms: a community splits into topic channels, and you can join a public one or be invited to a private one.
- Chats in messaging apps. Usually people who already know each other, or a friend of a friend, rather than open rooms full of strangers.
- The chat beside a live stream. One person broadcasts and everyone watching talks in a shared chat underneath.
- One-to-one video chat. Instead of a room of nicknames, you meet one person at a time and see each other.
The difference is that most of these are tied to something: a community, a group of friends or a stream. A room you can drop into with no reason except to talk to whoever happens to be there is rarer than it used to be.
What is a live chat room now?
Today "live chat room" usually means one of two things. On a shop or a bank's website it's the support chat window. Everywhere else it's most often the chat that runs alongside a live stream, and that is the one most like the old rooms: lots of people, one shared conversation, messages scrolling past in real time.
On Online Chat, that is how live streams work. A host broadcasts, you watch, and you can tap the chat button to type, with emoji if you like. If a message is in another language, the translate button beside it shows it in yours, and after the first time you use it, automatic translation switches on for new messages. Some hosts keep their chat for people who follow them or have sent a gift; when a stream is set that way, a note tells you what unlocks it.
Are online chat rooms safe?
They can be, as long as you remember who is reading. In a room, everything you type is seen by everyone in it, including people who never say a word. A few habits go a long way:
- Keep personal details out of the room. Full name, address, school or workplace, phone number and social media accounts don't belong in a public chat.
- Be wary of private invitations. Someone who quickly wants to move you to another app or a private chat is a common start to scams.
- Don't open links from strangers. Links dropped into busy rooms are a classic way to spread scams and malware.
- Use the block and report buttons. That is what they are for, and using them helps everyone else in the room too.
On Online Chat, reports are reviewed by people, not just filtered by software, and a block works the moment you tap it; you can undo it later from your block list. The rules we enforce are in the Safety Center, and what a stranger can and can't see on a call is in our post on how anonymous online chat is.
Rooms or one-to-one: which kind of chat suits you
A room suits you if you like a crowd: you can read along before you say anything, drop in and out, and talk about one shared topic with many people at once. The trade-off is that conversations stay shallow. Messages fly past, and it is hard to get to know any one person in a room of fifty.
One-to-one suits you if you would rather have an actual conversation. With one person, you get their full attention and they get yours, and on video you see who you're talking to instead of guessing from a nickname. Online Chat is built that way: there are no group rooms, every call is between two people, and you're matched with one person at a time or choose someone from the online list. The live streams are where the crowd is, if you want a bit of both.
If a one-to-one conversation sounds like what you were looking for in a chat room, start on the Online Chat homepage.