Parachat software allows webmasters to easily add a chat room to their website. The chatroom at this site is a Parachat room. Chat rooms have been used for online therapeutic interactions, both 1 to 1 and in groups. Jeanne Rust uses chat rooms as a portion of her online treatment for eating disorders . They offer the immediacy of real time interaction.
Misspellings usually abound, and there can be a sense of time pressure.
The immediacy can be important when a participant is emotional at the time. The potential for miscommunication due to the absence of nonverbal cues is probably greater here than in email. Short interactions which occur with a sense of time pressure are easy to misinterpret. Environments such as The Palace take chat one step farther. This can be a standard cartoon character, a photograph of yourself, or a graphic which you designed.