Online chatting

Participated in my first ever online chatting today through webCT with classmates. Had no idea you had to press enter to post your message, but finally worked it out. It's a strange thing - very immediate, fast and can take a while to read three messages that pop up together. Threads of conversations can get lost - I asked a question or two that didn't get followed up, or sometimes non-related things come in first before an answer. As others commented, being able to touch type is an advantage! I guess since we were just having a general chat and had nothing specific to chat about, our subject matter went all over the place, and because of that, you can't necessarily participate in everything. But I can see that if a group met to chat about a specific topic it could be very rewarding and fruitful. It was certainly nice to 'meet' some classmates in a different way to the discussion board. It was nice knowing that someone was in from overseas. And I really liked the immediacy in comparison to the discussion board.
I can't imagine what it would be like having a large number of people chatting at one time together. We had about 8 today by the time I jumped in.
I installed ICQ yesterday but now every time I turn my computer on it tells me there is a problem with it and I can't use it. I asked about it on the chat, but no-one seems at all interested in using it - I guess it's old hat, but I wouldn't know.