Media & Entertainment
Structuring Convergence
Paid Content

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Strategy
Time Based Competition
The "Vision" Thing

Internet
The Net Era
The Internet - Some Perspectives
Chat Society
Net Governance

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Brand Positioning
Brand Personality
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Written: 1999

Many of the scientific and economic advancements of the past few years have contributed to the increasing marginalisation of social interaction. Technology creates islands technology makes it less necessary to interact face to face. We no longer need to meet to exchange meat for clothes or guns for butter. The classic economic marketplace goes demat. No more face to face. No visiting the bank or the grocery. No need to call a friend over if you're feeling lonely. There's always the chat room.

In the social vacuum created by technological progress, people search for alternative ways of social engagement. One such powerful and emerging mechanism is online chats - technology's payback to the lonely people it has helped create.

You've probably seen the movie… "you've got mail" and if not, you've undoubtedly seen the 2 minute version of the movie in the coke ad featuring Amir and Aishwarya. Perhaps you've seen the touching ad for McDonalds… not all online chats are to do with romance. Nor are all people who chat online as beautiful as Aishwarya. Be that as it may, there's a definite new thing in the ether. Its got a life. It's a party waiting to happen. It's global and it can be found at talkcity or yahoo or irc or rediff. It's a little like attending a masquerade party. It's the penfriend syndrome revisited. It's a wizard of oz story for adults. What can you get from a chat room? Any amount of unsolicited sexual advances. Fortunately easier to ward off on your PC as compared to a lonely road in, say, New Delhi. But you can walk away with a friend… and who knows a spouse? The list of couples who have met on a chat is small but growing. And very real. The unreachability of Meg Ryan and Aishwarya notwithstanding.

One of the interesting things about chats is of course that you go straight to the character and nature of a person. There's no handsome (or otherwise) face to distract from the peep into the mind. Most people exchange pictures only when they are comfortable with the nature of the person they are speaking with. But the topics can range from the mundane to the bizarre. In the latter category I put my recent conversation with a girl from Rumania. About which I know one thing. Steau Bucharest - the football club. It turns that her significant other is a fan of Galatasarray the Turkish club. As a soccer fan, I give her unbiased advise on how to get a soccer buff to turn off the tv in the bedroom. The conversation ranges from the intelligent to the downright zany. But it's always enjoyable.

You have to learn the lingo of the chat rooms to be quick. LOL (laughing out loud) and brb (be right back) make for faster conversation. Once you've gone past afk, bbl, ltns, rofl and asl, youre ready to tread the deeper waters, which in a typical chat service spans diverse topics. This list comes from a well known chat provider…

"Teen Chat, Pillow Talk, 20ish, Romance, 30ish, Poetry Reading, 40ish, Music Lounge, 50 plus Club, Karaoke, Current Events, Joke Room, Entertainment, Sports Arena, Movies, Wall Street"

As you can see, all kinds of interests are taken care of. From Elliot to Ella Fitzgerald and from Options to Opportunities. If it interests you, somebody out there wants to talk about it too.

Business Buzz
Just as email and the web itself have transitioned from being perceived as "time wasters" to being recognised as essential business tools, chats may make their charge now. IT Companies have long used chats for customer support or for communicating with far flung colleagues. Pfizer can vouch for that. Pfizer launched a programme for communication among regional communications representatives located around the world. To improve the quality of communication from teleconferencing, but avoid the financial extravagance of the videoconference. The application is being used by some 40 or 50 people in about 10 locations, including New York, England, Spain, Turkey, Malaysia, and Brussels. Contrary to popular belief, chat can be monitored, recorded, and archived just as easily as voice or e-mail communications. Is it perhaps time that you considered the chat as a personal productivity tool?

Good versus evil & Naughty Naughton
Recently, a certain Patrick J. Naughton, senior exec at Walt Disney Co (see Wired Magazine Online) was arrested on sex related charges by the FBI. What makes this relevant is that the FBI nabbed him by posing as teenaged girls in chat rooms. Specifically, the Net and online chats in particular has proven to be a boon for the fight against paedophilia. Upto 337 convictions since 1995 have been made thanks to online chats where FBI agents pose as minor girls. According to wired magazine, "Agents posing as teens almost certainly outnumber actual teens in many of the Internet's seedier chat rooms these days" The conviction rate is at 99% because of the trap that the offenders lead themselves into.

An empirical study by Israely social scientists Barak and Wander-Schwartz found that the online chat room can be a mechanism for group therapy. In a paper presented in Boston in 1999, they report that groups that interact online fare as well or marginally better than real world groups in terms of improvement in self esteem, social relations and well being. The study, a path breaking one for psychologists interested in interactive therapeutic interventions, had 2 control groups - one online chat and the other standard face to face real life group. Members of the Internet group, reported higher levels of aggression, action orientation, and therapist support and control. They also displayed much faster processes of interpersonal relationships, reflected in such various aspects as love and dislike, aggression, and support. The scientists therefore conclude that although this study should be considered preliminary, and its findings should be handled carefully, it seems that an anonymous, Internet-based, chat-room group therapy is a legitimate method of psychological intervention and has a positive impact on interested individuals in need.

Another study adds that as long as the levels of anonymity are lowered, the size of the groups are smaller and there is self policing, between online chat culture and traditional human discourse, tradition definitely takes a beating. Of course, This happens when.

In fact, the chaos of the bulletin board and the chat room can have a profoundly negative effect upon the overall quality of conversation, a new study concludes. But when the talk moves into a less freewheeling environment, the level of the debate seems to improve.

And Just when you'd thought you'd seen it all…
Excite@home has just launched the first voice chat on a portal service. The service is provided by Lipstream™. As the name implies people can actually talk through speakers Voicechat.excite.com is the location of the service. This means that people with great writing styles and thin reedy voices are history. This also means that LOL may soon become history. Heck. This changes everything.