Synchronous computer-mediated communication

It has been suggested that Online chat be merged into this article. (Discuss) Proposed since May 2024.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Synchronous computer-mediated communication" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (October 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Synchronous conferencing or synchronous computer-mediated communication is the formal term used in computing, in particular in computer-mediated communication, collaboration, and learning, to describe technologies informally known as online chat.^[1] It is sometimes extended to include audio/video conferencing or instant messaging systems that provide a text-based multi-user chat function. The word synchronous is used to qualify the conferencing as real-time, as distinct from a system such as e-mail, where messages are left and answered later.

Synchronous conferencing protocols include:

• IRC (Internet Relay Chat)
• PSYC (Protocol for Synchronous Conferencing)
• SILC (Secure Internet Live Conferencing protocol)
• XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol)
• SIMPLE (instant messaging protocol) (Session Initiation Protocol for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions)