I am a judgment broker that writes often. A long time ago, before the web; people chatted by typing text in (almost) real-time, with a BBS (Bulletin Board System) or telnet-type services with other people, usually communicating with analog modems. Flash is going away (but not dead yet), however there are some non-flash based Forum and chat software.
Now, some form of text chat is built into mobile phones, devices, and certain computers, with Skype, and hundreds of other software and services; and text chat is now usually known as instant messaging. However, most instant message text chat software and systems are designed for one-to-one chats.
One-to-one text chatting is great, however there has been, and will always be a need for private community-based text chat server systems, dedicated primarily to specific topics.
On most chat systems, there is no need to correct every typing mistake, because chats are informal. Most private chat forums are often quiet, and many get busier at night.
At my company, we used to have a web-based judgment enforcer’s private online forum, with a built-in live text chatting system. Our chat system was only for judgment enforcers that have registered on our free forum, it was not open to the public. This is just one example, there are many private forums featuring text chat services dedicated to almost every topic.
Chat texting is sometimes real-time, however most often, it is like the rest of life; it is off and on. Certain people leave a chat window open, however they take time off to work, eat, go to the restroom, sleep, etc. It is very OK to walk away from a busy text chat conversation by simply typing (e.g., BRB, BBS, or TTYL) – short for Be Right Back, Be Back Soon, or Talk To You Later.
It is what you do, how you feel, and what you can accomplish; in the many “dead” quiet times, that might someday add up and count. When the world and business are usually very slow, especially in early mornings, nights, weekends, and holidays; those are the times that certain people might keep a chat window open.
Searching on the web for forum chat software which scales to mobile devices, shows that most companies are selling products geared toward big companies with their expensive APP-based solutions. Searching for online chat rooms or online chat forums on the web, also brings up way too many adult-related sites.
A problem that hinders progress on private forum-based chat software solutions, is there are not that many customers. For every private forum text chat member there are perhaps 50,000 instant messaging customers. There is not a lot of money in private forum-based text chat software, however there is a need for it, and several companies have solutions.
Many private text chatting systems are relatively small. Most are tied to private web-based forums, and only their registered users can access their chat feature. Ideally, text chat server solutions would:
1) Automatically scale down to work on most small screens and portable devices.
2) The font size would stay about the same, no matter how small the screen is, minimizing everything except the ongoing conversations. A scrolling function, to see previous conversations, would be good.
3) There would not be a need to install any APPs, it would simply work on the web browsing application or function, on portable devices.
One forum-based text chat software company which provides a web-based solution is gchats.net. There are several forum-related chat software vendors, however most products (e.g., gchats) do not work, or work well, with small browser windows or on portable devices.
FlashChat’s software package is free, and works better than most other chatting software on small screens. Alas, the days of flash appear to be numbered, and I cannot easily find a good replacement for FlashChat, but my testing of 123FlashChat.com shows a great HTML 5 chat replacement for FlashChat.