|
Chat rooms are very popular social destinations on the Internet. Such online chat rooms are especially popular among younger demographics. For example, over 70 percent of 13-17 year old teenagers access an online chat room every week.
Many companies use chat rooms as a way to build connections with this demographic. Other individuals create online chat rooms to provide a gathering place on the Internet.
However, running a chat room comes with significant responsibilities in terms of moderation and chat room safety. Learn how to create an online chat room and how to avoid common chat room pitfalls.
Difficulty: Moderately Easy
Instructions
Step 1
Choose the theme of the online chat room. Some chat rooms are meant to be a free-for-all, allowing any individual to join and talk about any subject. Other chat rooms are focused on a specific genre or age, thus restricting who can join and what subjects can be discussed.
Step 2
Understand the critical safety issues of online chat rooms. You will need to moderate the chat room or find individuals to do so for you. Online chat rooms may sometimes become the haunting grounds of online predators and other unsavory characters. You will need to police the chat room to ensure that individuals do not solicit minors or share other illegal material, photographs or viruses.
Step 3
Register an account with an online chat room service provider. These service providers host the chat room infrastructure and manage the web technology behind the chat room. Three of the most popular free chat room service providers include ChatMaker, Chatzy and Meebo.
Step 4
Name your chat room and enter a short description. All three chat room service providers mentioned in Step 3 give you full customisation and control over your personal chat room. The room name and description should make the chat room's genre and subject clear to browsing individuals. In this way, people can decide whether to join your online chat room and take part in its discussions.
Step 5
Promote your chat room. A successful chat room has talkative individuals who keep a discussion going and engage new visitors. Send a link to your chat room to friends, family and associates. Link to your chat room in your email signature. Join online forums and similar chat rooms and share your chat room's link.
Step 6
Moderate your chat room. For safety reasons, your chat room should always have a moderator available to address the concerns of users. Moderators should also monitor the subject matter being discussed in the chat room to ban individuals who create safety problems. If a moderator is unavailable, such as late in the evening, consider temporarily closing the chat room.
|
