1810: Chat Systems

2017-03-13T20:06:33Z

Bcrules82:

{{comic
| number = 1810
| date = March 13, 2017
| title = Chat Systems
| image = chat_systems.png
| titletext = I'm one of the few Instagram users who connects solely through the Unix 'talk' gateway.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Fill in the table and explain the title text. The main purpose of an euler diagram needs to be explained. (E.g. BBM in eMail; WhatsApp in eMail and SMS)}}
In the world of social media, connecting to and communicating with friends, relatives, and other acquaintances can be extremely easy, but due to the large amount of networks and systems through which to communicate, and the selective nature of the people using them, it can be difficult to keep track of who uses which system(s), and thus, communication can be more complicated by social media as well.

;Chat systems mentioned
{| class="wikitable"
!System
!Explanation
|-
| {{w|Skype}}
|Microsoft's chat client. It offers VoIP video and audio calls, instant messaging and phoning from within the app.
|-
|Email
|A popular form of electronic communication that saw first widespread use in the 1960's. It allows you to send electronic "letters" to people using pre-exchanged email addresses. Many people use this platform, hence the large size of the corresponding circle.
|-
|SMS
|Short Message System; a text-based messaging system connecting most worldwide phone systems that had its beginnings in the 1980's and has since represented the most common form of data transmission for most people. It is principally used to send short text messages between mobile phones, but most phone carriers provide facilities to send-to-email or send-to-voice (for use with landline phones). Most major phone carriers also provide support for email-to-SMS.
|-
|AIM
|AOL Instant Messaging service; a popular messaging system from the 1990's that suffered a severe decline in 2005 upon the release of Gmail and Google Chat. It is based on the closed source OSCAR protocol, but AOL created the TOC/TOC2 protocol specifications, and made specifications openly available, for third parties to connect to their service. There have been short-lived dalliances with other protocols since 2008; it has never had direct support for the other widely used protocols here.
|-
|Slack
|A team instant messaging service
|-
|Hangouts
|Google Hangouts is Google's instant messaging system. It can be used to share data and for video chat.
|-
|ICQ
|An older open-source instant messaging application.
|-
|iMessage
|Apple's SMS service
|-
|IRC
|IRC is an old chat system that many people refuse to switch off of.
|-
|Snapchat
|
|-
|Signal
| An app used for encrypted communications.
|-
|FB Messenger
|Facebook's chat system.
|-
|Instagram DM
|Direct Messaging, a feature of Instagram that allows users to post personal messages to each other.
|-
|Zephyr
| {{w|Zephyr (protocol)}}
|-
|WhatsApp
|Billed as encrypted end-to-end chat, allows VoIP chats, text chats, video and image sharing. Caters for group chat as well.
|-
|WeChat
|
|-
|Telegram
|Either a cloud based instant messaging system, or a message sent by telegraph, usually electrical telegraph.
|-
|Apache Request Log
|A file used by Apache HTML server to log page access requests by users, usually stored as access_log. Its use as a communications tool would require the user to embed their messages in URLs and the admin to look for the messages in the logs. It would be inconvenient and time consuming for both parties.
|-
|Twitter DM
| "Direct messages" between users on {{w|Twitter}}.
|-
|BBM
|Blackberry message. A chat system available on Blackberry phones, now largely obsolete.
|-
|Peach
|
|-
|Unix 'talk'
|Old peer-to-peer chat system whereby users logged into the same UNIX system could privately communicate with each other in a full-screen interface. {{w|Talk_(software)}}
|-
|Wall (Unix)
|Short for "write all", the "wall" command copies its argument to every user logged into the same Unix system, and so can be used as a primitive chat system. {{w|Wall_(Unix)}}
|-
|Wall (bathroom)
|Apparently a chat system based around writing on the wall in the bathroom. Not an electronic system. Alternatively, this could mean the person is an extreme introvert, and hides in his bathroom instead of interacting with others.
|-
|The "chat" tab in an old Google Doc
|Google Docs is an online word processor reminiscent of Microsoft Word. One of the notable features is online collaborative editing, with a rudimentary chat feature for communication. Randall apparently communicates with someone using the chat in an old Google Doc.
|}

;Related comics
*The ubiquity of standards - here, of messaging systems - was already covered in [[927: Standards]]
*For IRC see also [[1782: Team Chat]]

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}
:[an Euler diagram with a large number of circles for various chat systems, overlapping in complicated ways]
:I have a hard time keeping track of which contacts use which chat systems.

{{comic discussion}}

explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

1810: Chat Systems