History Real-time text chat facilities such as IRC appeared in the late 1980s. Web-based chat and instant messaging software appeared in the mid-1990s. The PLATO computer learning system allowed students to collaborate on networked computers to accomplish learning tasks as early as the 1960s, but the early networking was not accomplished via the World Wide Web and PLATO's collaborative goals were not consistent with the presenter-audience dynamic typical of web conferencing systems. Several point-to-point and private-network video conferencing products were introduced in the early 1990s, most notably CU-SeeMe, which was used to link selected schools around the United States of America in real-time collaborative communications as part of the Global Schoolhouse project from Global SchoolNet. In May 1995, PictureTel announced LiveShare Plus as a general-use data collaboration product for Windows-b...