Chat services in review

Yahoo claim to have thousands of chatters in hundreds of rooms at any one time. Yahoo chat certainly does have a diverse selection of rooms from all over the world, It also has chat rooms that are designed to cater for peoples interests, examples being the computers lobby, or the sports rooms. There are also chat rooms for cities from around the world where local people can talk as well as outsiders or potential visitors. The big downside to yahoo chat is that the rooms appear to be un-moderated and as a result some chat rooms are a bit of a free for all. Yahoo do take a stance on this and offer an abuse email address where you can report an abusive chatter. Yahoo chat also supports multimedia chat either through web cam or voice chat. Web cam chat has excellent features that allow the user to decide who can view his or her Web cam. The voice chat is great for those times when you simply can't be bothered typing.

Lycos chat: Lycos chat is based upon a ships theme with it's own in-built hierarchy of rank.

You start off as a passenger and you have the potential to be promoted to the rank of captain if you chat hard enough. By internet standards Lycos chat is a friendly place to chat. The chat is also moderated by administrators and navigators. Navigators are chat users who have become promoted to the extent that they can be trusted. Navigators are there to assist new chatters and also to keep an eye on the room. The chat rooms on Lycos are named after parts of a ship for example all the city rooms are on the city deck. If you compare Lycos to  Yahoo it is a lot smaller in terms of the volume of chatters and the number of chat rooms, but during busy times Lycos is a great place to chat. Lycos does not support voice or web cams but does have a few other features that some chat sites do not, such as the chatters logbook. Each chatter has his or her own log book where other chatters can leave you a message. You can also use ship mail to send emails between chatters.

MSN chat: is a chat service from the Microsoft network. It is very much based on the .net password.

From the users point of view this has to be one of the most basic popular chat site on the web,  however it runs trouble free and is pretty fast. You are able to alter your room options to highlight only certain chatters, ignore certain chatters. You can also alter your display of the room. MSN chat is un-moderated but there is a direct link from the chat room called "Stop abuse" There is also an slightly annoying audible warning when ever anyone enters or leaves the chat room, although this can be turned of from within the chat options screen. 

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