talk or talker

A form of technology that allows sysops, programmers, and other users to communicate with each other via the Internet. A talker is a cross between a MUD and an IRC (without the role playing of MUDs and without a real-time chat room). Users connect via a Telnet application (though it is possible to connect to some talkers via a Web browser).

Talkers make use of either full-screen or line-by-line ASCII graphics/text, and in order to use it, you must know the address of the talker as well as the special codes required for interacting with others. It's a techie thing, because you have to get involved with code. There is a talk program that comes with most versions of Unix. Any number of users (restricted only by the bandwidth of the server the talker is running on) can login to the Telnet site and see what others are typing in real time.