Online chat rooms were one of the first online social outlets, slightly behind forums and message boards. Live chat was a giant leap ahead of the standard message posting that forums offered, now people could talk in REAL time for the first time and it was quite an exciting thing! It was big business back in the mid 90s to mid 2000s and used for many different facets from business to entertainment.
Further interest of free chat rooms got many development companies involved and how it began to change. More chat systems were popping up and suddenly anyone and everyone could run a full interactive free chat rooms on their website. Only handful ever got really popular and as more and more features were becoming available, buddy lists, avatars and more. Online chat rooms began to evolve, they had evolved from the standard text chat to now avatar chat rooms and eventually video chat rooms, which we'll get into more later.
MySpace was the beginning of big changes in the chat industry, although both coexisted for a while, the way people used the internet began to change. It was Facebook some years later than really stole the thunder of live chat, suddenly the majority of people who were looking for general online social interaction deviated from the standard chat rooms and begin to use social media.
Chat rooms remain popular today, but nothing like how they used to be. Some niches of chat rooms are all but dead, one or two remain popular that we will get into detail later. Search volume for common chat phrases dropped by a huge amount and suddenly a lot of the old school popular free chat sites began closing their doors.
The rise of the smart phone has breathed new life into the chat room industry. Now suddenly a lot of social media platforms and various new styles of sites incorporate live chatting features into their products, and the new mobile market demands a fast compatible smooth chat application so that people can chat on the go.
Video chat is also a VERY popular nice in the adult industry. People are highly interested and always will be it seems in cam chat rooms. Smart phones are catching up in terms of the technology where they will be able to support live cam chat from phones, when that happens you can expect a whole new product for mobile phone live cam chat rooms.