Web chat: Difference between revisions
i might move some of the other chat stuff to a diff page. (probably never lol) thanks again for looking out for my mistakes anonwaha!! |
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== The Evolution of Web Chats in the West == | == The Evolution of Web Chats in the West == | ||
What was one of the most popular, and first site that came to provide chat services would be Web Chat Broadcasting System (formerly Internet Roundtable Society), first founded in 1990, and subsequentially becoming generally mainstream in 1993. <ref name="WBS press">[https://web.archive.org/web/19971210161302/http://wbs.net/wbs/press/press.html archive.org of wbs.net's press page]</ref> | What was one of the most popular, and first site that came to provide chat services would be Web Chat Broadcasting System (formerly Internet Roundtable Society), first founded in 1990, and subsequentially becoming generally mainstream in 1993. <ref name="WBS press">[https://web.archive.org/web/19971210161302/http://wbs.net/wbs/press/press.html archive.org of wbs.net's press page]</ref> | ||
(note to self, irsociety.com migrated to wbs.com. they seem to be the earliest webchat site?) | |||
In , w3 had released the first open source | <strike>In 1994, w3 had released the first open source | ||
<small>(not 100% sure, will do more research. also need to see if the japs got to them before the west. it's definitely not but still. wbs is closed source right..?)</small> | <small>(not 100% sure, will do more research. also need to see if the japs got to them before the west. it's definitely not but still. wbs is closed source right..?)</small> | ||
web chat system, known as WWW Interactive Talk.<ref>[https://www.w3.org/WIT/ WWW Interactive Talk on w3. links to any actual code is dead..]</ref> | web chat system, known as WWW Interactive Talk.<ref>[https://www.w3.org/WIT/ WWW Interactive Talk on w3. links to any actual code is dead..]</ref> | ||
It was developed by Ari Luotonen | It was developed by Ari Luotonen in 3 days, and subsequently released as a Bourne shell script for the public to use. The source code seems to be lost, as the original source code had disappeared in 1997.<ref>[https://www.forum-software.org/news/24122010-wit-the-first-wwwboard-ever forum-software.org article on WWW Interactive Talk]</ref></strike> (im actually not even sure if WWW interactive talk is really like a web chat. seemed more like a really old BBS if anything but theres like the one screenshot on the news page waha sent...) | ||
Whereas during this time, IRC and other real-time chat solutions had existed by this time, it was still very difficult for general everyday users to understand in comparison to how easy Web Chat such as WBS and other independent sites had made the process much more streamlined. As a result, WBS had quickly amassed 2.2 million registered users,<ref name="WBS press" /> drawing lots of attention and leading the company into fame. | Whereas during this time, IRC and other real-time chat solutions had existed by this time, it was still very difficult for general everyday users to understand in comparison to how easy Web Chat such as WBS and other independent sites had made the process much more streamlined. As a result, WBS had quickly amassed 2.2 million registered users by 1997,<ref name="WBS press" /> drawing lots of attention and leading the company into fame. | ||
WBS was not the only website providing these services however, with competitors such as Tripod, and Geocities (i feel like mentioning tripod is important since it seemed to have CGI support, | WBS was not the only website providing these services however, with competitors such as Tripod, and Geocities | ||
(i feel like mentioning tripod is important since it seemed to have CGI support, letting people make their own webchat. only that i cant find any tripod websites with any of those... that arent japanese... and even then i cant find any) | |||
Later, in 1998, WBS would be sold to Infoseek, a web search engine popular at the time. At the same time, many other companies had bought up other sites, namely Lycos (who now also owns Angelfire) purchasing Tripod for $58M USD. This, alongside other competitors such as Yahoo, and their respective chat led to a tense battle between companies to try rake in the highest user base.<ref name="WBS buyout">[https://www.wired.com/1998/04/web-portals-play-leapfrog/ 1999 WIRED article on the recent purchase of WBS]</ref> | Later, in 1998, WBS would be sold to Infoseek, a web search engine popular at the time. At the same time, many other companies had bought up other sites, namely Lycos (who now also owns Angelfire) purchasing Tripod for $58M USD. This, alongside other competitors such as Yahoo, and their respective chat led to a tense battle between companies to try rake in the highest user base.<ref name="WBS buyout">[https://www.wired.com/1998/04/web-portals-play-leapfrog/ 1999 WIRED article on the recent purchase of WBS]</ref> | ||
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(TODO: a post-dotcom bubble paragraph or two. i think geocities webchat is applicable, and that lasted a bit after dotcom bubble burst. i think) | (TODO: a post-dotcom bubble paragraph or two. i think geocities webchat is applicable, and that lasted a bit after dotcom bubble burst. i think) | ||
== The Evolution of Web Chats in the East == | == The Evolution of Web Chats in the East == | ||
Revision as of 13:56, 8 February 2025
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This page is under construction or broken... |
Web Chats are chatrooms based on the web, accessible through a web browser. They are generally accepted as some of the first forms of real-time chat, being introduced around TEH OLDE days of the 1990s. This was before the dotcom bubble had helped make the internet mainstream, and as a result is also accepted as a RELIK OF THA PAST
(i'll figure out the wording here some time soon...)
The Evolution of Web Chats in the West
What was one of the most popular, and first site that came to provide chat services would be Web Chat Broadcasting System (formerly Internet Roundtable Society), first founded in 1990, and subsequentially becoming generally mainstream in 1993. [1] (note to self, irsociety.com migrated to wbs.com. they seem to be the earliest webchat site?)
In 1994, w3 had released the first open source
(not 100% sure, will do more research. also need to see if the japs got to them before the west. it's definitely not but still. wbs is closed source right..?)
web chat system, known as WWW Interactive Talk.[2]
It was developed by Ari Luotonen in 3 days, and subsequently released as a Bourne shell script for the public to use. The source code seems to be lost, as the original source code had disappeared in 1997.[3] (im actually not even sure if WWW interactive talk is really like a web chat. seemed more like a really old BBS if anything but theres like the one screenshot on the news page waha sent...)
Whereas during this time, IRC and other real-time chat solutions had existed by this time, it was still very difficult for general everyday users to understand in comparison to how easy Web Chat such as WBS and other independent sites had made the process much more streamlined. As a result, WBS had quickly amassed 2.2 million registered users by 1997,[1] drawing lots of attention and leading the company into fame.
WBS was not the only website providing these services however, with competitors such as Tripod, and Geocities (i feel like mentioning tripod is important since it seemed to have CGI support, letting people make their own webchat. only that i cant find any tripod websites with any of those... that arent japanese... and even then i cant find any)
Later, in 1998, WBS would be sold to Infoseek, a web search engine popular at the time. At the same time, many other companies had bought up other sites, namely Lycos (who now also owns Angelfire) purchasing Tripod for $58M USD. This, alongside other competitors such as Yahoo, and their respective chat led to a tense battle between companies to try rake in the highest user base.[4] During all this, The dotcom bubble gradually became larger and larger as time progressed, with the previously mentioned Lycos peaking to a
(TODO: a post-dotcom bubble paragraph or two. i think geocities webchat is applicable, and that lasted a bit after dotcom bubble burst. i think)
The Evolution of Web Chats in the East
(write about Yuiscript, see if there are any other older or newer CGI chat scripts other than COMCHAT.. and wonder if translator-sama is telling me the right things..)
The Death of Web Chat
Today, ancient HTML style web chatting has fallen out of the mainstream and forgotten, as the progression of other, modern chatting software such as Discord, Skype (lol) and Slack. (they dont really count.. right? you can run all of these in a web browser but they are not really the same?
Heyuri's Web Chat(s)
Heyuri as of writing has a single live web chat; being the Chat@Heyuri channel accessible at https://cgi.heyuri.net/chat/. The chatroom is based on COMCHAT, a CGI/Perl based web chat developed by KentWeb.
(i kinda wanna expand a bit. but i dunno what to talk abt)
Heyuri also has used COMCHAT to manage a now defunct chat for Hakoniwa Islands during peak times in the game's playercount. It is still up, in a read only state. (I'll put a link up sometime...)
Links
- Wikipedia page on WebChat Broadcasting System [1]
- KentWeb site archive [2] (original website still alive actually)
- Yuiscript site [3] (site is seemingly still up.. seemingly everything except the inbound & code links are dead)
