The Advanced Guide to chat with older guys

Posted by Allyson on June 13th, 2021

Microsofts two major competitors in providing Internet services said yesterday that they had no plans to emulate its decision to shut down many free chat rooms in the United States and abroad.

Free chat rooms have been among the most popular features of the Internet since long before its commercialization. But from the start, chat rooms have been considered a haven for criminal behavior, with child predators getting the most attention from law enforcement agencies. More recently, consumers have expressed frustration with the barrage of spam, including postings that link to pornographic sites.

On Tuesday, in response to those complaints, Microsoft said that it was shutting its free chat service in the United States and 28 other countries in an effort to curtail the use of the service for pornography, spam and other inappropriate activities.

We were seeing an increase in complaints from customers about how chat was being used, said Lisa Gurry, group product manager for MSN at Microsoft.

Yesterday, Yahoo, which has even more chat room participants than Microsoft, said that it would not follow Microsofts lead and start charging. Currently, we have no plans to announce any policy changes to our service, said Mary Osako, a spokeswoman for Yahoo.

And AOL noted that its primary chat rooms were already for subscribers only. Weve always had a strong commitment to safety, security and privacy, said Nicholas Graham, a spokesman for America Online Incorporated.

AOL said its chat rooms for children were moderated, and all other AOL chat rooms were visited by a moderator at random to try to curb any behavior that senior sex chat might violate the companys terms of service.

But AOLs Web site, aol.com, offers additional chat rooms that are open to nonsubscribers, though they must first register as users of AOL instant messaging and provide AOL with their e-mail address. The company does not require participants in those chat rooms to provide an address or credit card number, as Microsoft says it will now do, but those participants are not able to interact with chat rooms on the paid AOL service, Mr. Graham said. He said AOL had no plans to close the Web site chat rooms.

The MSN chat feature will continue to be available to paying customers in the United States, Japan, Brazil and Canada, but users must provide a credit card number.

Ms. Gurry said Microsoft had already seen a decline in the use of the chat service on MSN in favor of MSN Messenger, an instant messaging service that allows subscribers to chat with people they know.

But while Microsoft may have noticed a decline, Yahoo said its chat rooms were still quite popular.

In August, MSNs chat rooms had 4.3 million unique visitors, whereas Yahoos had 11.4 million, according to ComScore Media Metrix, a market research company. AOLs People Connection, which also includes other community features in addition to chat rooms, had 18.5 million unique visitors, ComScore said.

Subscribers to MSN, Microsofts online service, pay .95 or more a month for access to the Internet, e-mail, a variety of proprietary content, instant messaging and chat rooms. Of those features, the chat rooms have been open to Internet users who do not subscribe to MSN but get access to the Internet through other services.

Michael Gartenberg, research director at Jupiter Research, said Microsoft acted to give customers a better product, not to reap any additional revenue. But by cleaning up its chat rooms MSN will more easily attract families and children to its service.

Theyre saying, Were going to allow the people paying for this service to get the most out of it, without being harassed, Mr. Gartenberg said.