When we launched our new IRC channel (see our announcement for more information), we got e-mail from some Observers asking about the differences between IRC, AIM, ICQ, iChat, and all of the other derivatives out there.

The world of online chat can be confusing to people not familiar with all the terms, the networks, the clients, and everything else.  In an attempt to tap the knowledge of our community, I thought I would throw the question to you, so that those looking for advice could get many different opinions.

Without further ado, do you have any chat advice for a chat newbie?  Which networks do you recommend?  Which client?  Is iChat, AOL’s AIM client, or Adium the best?  Why?

Provide links, where applicable, and remember that your audience is people who may not be so familiar with all of the concepts. 

Sorry for the delay in writing this, but I’ve had a busy day.

What I’m going to discuss is the difference between AIM and relatives and IRC. I leave specific advice on clients to others - I have very particular biases that probably won’t match others’ suggestions. (I like command-line things a little too much. )

AOL Instant Messenger (also known as AIM) and its relatives ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN Messenger are all known as Instant Messenger (IM) programs. Their primary purpose is one-on-one conversation in private with a single person. You can have multiple conversations going on at the same time, but each one is only between yourself and one other person.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC), on the other hand, is organized primarily as a group communication. You join a particular group of people (known as a channel) and converse as a group. Whatever you say is shown to all persons in the channel.

Now, these lines can be blurred a bit. AIM allows for ‘private chat’, in which one person invites several together for a group discussion, and IRC allows Direct Client Chat, which is one-on-one, as well as one-off private messages. However, they do still serve different purposes as noted above.

If I have some time later I might go into more detail on IRC in particular.

Jason