When these technologies were first invented and how they developed over time.
Instant Messaging
Instant messaging was first invented in 1960s-1970s and was really jump started by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). They figured out how to let up to 30 users be logged in at the same time and be able to send messages to each other. In the mid 1970s programmers started working on peer-to-peer protocol, letting universities and research labs to enact simple communication between users of the same computer. In the 1980s a terminal program was created that allowed you to upload and download software and exchange direct messages with each other. IM continued to grow throughout the years and has became something more than we’ve ever imagined.
Chat Rooms
The general idea and break through of a chat room was invented by Roy Trubshaw a student from England’s University of Essex, in 1978. He programmed and made an online game that became very popular and went from being an online game where you could communicate with other people to being a chat room with groups, topics, etc. Then, in 1988, Jarkko Oikarinen working at the University of Oulu in Finland, created Internet Relay Chat (IRC). It was made to talk about software, news and other issues online (was suppose to support bulletin board functions). As before, people enjoyed the social aspects of IRC and made it into a place of sharing information. In the 1990s it was the way of getting news and how you would connect to people around the world. Chat rooms continued to grow and develop in different ways throughout the years and has come to amaze us how we can be so connected to people so far away.