From the course: Working and Collaborating Online

Understand instant messaging, voice, and video chat

From the course: Working and Collaborating Online

Understand instant messaging, voice, and video chat

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- The internet makes it possible for us to stay in touch with our friends, family, and colleagues online. Communication can happen in real-time with apps and services that make it easy to chat through instant messaging, voice calling and video calls. Instant messaging is a text-based form of communication, where you can type messages on your computer or mobile device to send to people who can then instantly read and respond to your messages on their devices. Voice calling over the internet is similar to traditional phone calls, only instead of using a landline or mobile phone, you place your call over the internet using an app. And video calling is like a voice call, but where you and the people you're calling can hear and see each other. Which of these three forms of communication you use depends on what you determine is appropriate at the time. If you just need to ask a quick question, but don't necessarily need an immediate response, you can send an instant message. Your recipients can then respond when they have a moment. If you need a more immediate reply, you can try a voice call. And video-based calls can make it easier to have certain conversations because you can see each other and read the expressions on each caller's face. In many cases, there are apps that allow you to use all three of these forms of communication while other apps focus specifically on one or two types. Apple FaceTime, for example, allows you to make voice and video calls, but you use a separate Apple app called iMessage for instant messaging. Another example is WhatsApp, which is an app that lets you send messages and voice and video chat as well. And there's also Skype, which in addition to instant messages and voice and video chatting is also one of the few apps through which you can call phone numbers, letting you make both domestic and international calls from your computer or mobile phone. In this chapter, we'll look more closely at communicating using Skype.

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