IRC vs Web-based Chat
With the current trend of internet and wireless communication Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and Web-based chat have been standing out. These two applications enable chatting or sending messages through the aid of an internet connection in real-time. IRC has been one of the earliest ways of chatting which millions of people are now currently using but is slowly being replaced by web-based chatting. Aside from their capabilities of sending real-time messages, both types of chatting offers the capability to set private chatrooms where only authorized users can view and interact with you. Of course, one can also join the public chatrooms and group chats.
The use of IRC is more complicated compared to the use of a web-based chatroom. This is because IRC is a protocol and needs a client that is responsible for communicating with a server to enable chatting. A shareware like mIRC is needed to be able to access the chatrooms located in Internet channels. Usually a list of available channels is shown once a person enters and one just needs the channel of his choice and chatting can start right away. Web based chat on the other hand like those found in yahoo, facebook and googletalk used software that is already present at the website unlike in IRC where one must install an IRC client first. Although today, both IRC and web-based chat has messaging capabilities, IRC is still more secure because of the presence of privacy monitoring while chat does not have this type of security feature (Fregoe, 2011).
With regards to user friendliness, web-based chat is more user-friendly and simpler to use compared to IRC since it just needs a user account and is actually present in the hosts’ website, taking away the burden of opening another program before sending the chat messages.
References
Fregoe, Matt (2011). Differences Between Chat & IRC. Retrieved from http://www.ehow.com/info_8591061_differences-between-chat-irc.html
Livinginternet.com (2012). Key IRC features. Retrieved from http://www.livinginternet.com/r/rp.htm
