The Chat Graveyard
A List of Closed Down Chat Sites
Here is a list of every popular chat site that has closed down. If a reason or date for their closure was given we've done our best to find it and place it here in the Chat Graveyard. We've also included a shorter list of dead chatroom software providers towards the bottom of the page.
Last Updated: 11/9/2023
On November 8th, 2023 after 14 years of operation, the popular online video chat hub known as Omegle shut down. The owner, Leif K-Brooks left a long message on the domain omegle.com where he detailed Omegles history as well as his disdain for activists who brought numerous lawsuits over the years. These suites alleged the online platform was responsible for attacks on children by pedophiles who used the site.
"I’ve done my best to weather the attacks, with the interests of Omegle’s users – and the broader principle – in mind. If something as simple as meeting random new people is forbidden, what’s next? That is far and away removed from anything that could be considered a reasonable compromise of the principle I outlined. Analogies are a limited tool, but a physical-world analogy might be shutting down Central Park because crime occurs there – or perhaps more provocatively, destroying the universe because it contains evil. A healthy, free society cannot endure when we are collectively afraid of each other to this extent.
Unfortunately, what is right doesn’t always prevail. As much as I wish circumstances were different, the stress and expense of this fight – coupled with the existing stress and expense of operating Omegle, and fighting its misuse – are simply too much. Operating Omegle is no longer sustainable, financially nor psychologically. Frankly, I don’t want to have a heart attack in my 30s.
The battle for Omegle has been lost, but the war against the Internet rages on. Virtually every online communication service has been subject to the same kinds of attack as Omegle; and while some of them are much larger companies with much greater resources, they all have their breaking point somewhere." - omegle.com
On Nov 30, 2020, Kidzworld posted "Today, after many years of friendship we are sadly closing our chat room and social community at Kidzworld."
Blackchat.co.uk closed down at the end of 2020. They left the message "After 22 years we have decided to upgrade, and would like to thank all those who have used the old rooms over the years, we have had a lot of trolls and racists who have tried to disrupt it but we managed to keep it going, however we now recognise it is time for change, so have closed the hangout chatroom down with immediate effect". A year later, the domain began forwarding to frontroom.link.
ChatForFree.org had not been updated in years but had about 50 chatters in its rooms at any given time. It ran a combination of 123FlashChat and ChatBlazer. The domain stoped loading in October of 2020 without any notice.
E-Chat.co, was a chat site that hosts user created rooms. It was very populal with 1000+ chatters online at all times but in October of 2020 they posted a note on their website saying "E-Chat is currently suspended untill further notice. Due to the abuse on the website we have been forced (by extenal forces) to suspend our service." They say they will be back but we've seen messages like this stay in place for years on end. If they ever do return we will update.
It's hard to believe that a domain like "TeenChat.Com" would ever be shut down but that is just what has happened. If you go to the site you'll see the same chat login prompt that has been there for years but you can no longer login. The owner of the site seems to be keeping the domain up for sentimental reasons but there is no longer a working chat room here. I'd assume eventually the owner will add a chat room or sell the domain, it just seems too crazy that a domain like this would remain down forever.
Zobe.com and the chat software it used was owned by the same person as teenchat.com. Both sites seemed to have closed at the same time. It's rather unfortunate because zobe.com was a pretty unique chat and remained popular to the day it went down.
Everywherechat.com is a domain that has been around for a very long time wich started out by offering free embeddable chat rooms for website owners. Everywhere Chat also maintained a room on their home page which had a loyal following. Some time around 2017 they updated their design with a fresh new professional look, they seemed to be working on upgrading and adding features and then one day the chat room and the ability to embed chats on web pages disappeared No explanation was given.
Yahoo closed it chat rooms on December 14, 2012. Just two years after AIM Chat closed. Plagued by spammers, pedophiles and dwindling numbers yahoo viewed their chatrooms more as a liability than a money maker. Yahoo attempted to send users to their Yahoo Messenger product which gave them much more control over offensive behavior. However Yahoo Messenger membership continued to fall to the point of irrelevancy. Seeing the success of apps like SnapChat, Yahoo reworked and relaunched their Yahoo Messenger App at the end of 2016 but closed it on July 17, 2018
MSN Chatrooms closed in 2003, the reason given was that they were uncomfortable with the amount of pedophiles and junk emailers the sites seemed to attract. However it was more likely a financial move as chatters cost more in bandwidth than they contributed through advertisements.
MSN Messenger started in 1999 to compete against AOL's AIM messenger service. MSN shut down its messenger application in October of 2014 in an attempt to move users to Skype a property it had recently acquired.
The WebChat Broadcasting System (WBS) was the first major online chat site. The WBS thrived by creating a friendly user interface and offering a wide range of rooms categorized by age, location and sexual orientation. In 1998 Infoseek bought WBS for $6.7 Million and within 6 months Infoseek was purchased by the Go Network. The Go Network shut down the WBS and attempted to guide users to their Java-based chatrooms. In 2009 a WBS replica site was created
TheGlobe.com rose to great popularity in mid 90s through their chat rooms, member generated profile pages and the flood of money that came with the company going public in 1998. TheGlobe.Com posted the largest first day gain of any IPO up to that date but was an early victim of the dot-com bubble. Just one year after going public Theglobe was in free fall and by 2001 the website had been shut down.
The park was a HTML based chat room in the mid 90s that enjoyed immense popularity very quickly. At its peek The-Park received nearly 6 million "hits" per day and like many others was out of business by 2001. The creator of The-Park has been writing a book explaining the rise and fall of one of the first social networking site; titled "The Park Odyssey". You can get in contact with former The-Park members at The Earth Communications Center
4-lane.com (Omni-Chat), was often referred to as ChatterBox-- its most popular chat section on the 4-lane.com domain. Omni-Chat was unique in that it let its chatters post HTML code directly into the room. Chatters could change their font size and color as well as post links to other sites by simply typing the code into the text box. This level of access is ultimately what lead to its demise. People relentlessly spammed the chat rooms and often broke them with HTML posts that froze the room until the administrator could reset it. Today the site is still intact and about half of the rooms are functioning with the rest containing sporadic posts from visitors passing through their old digital stomping grounds.
Google Lively Chat Rooms was a short lived 3D cartoon style virtual reality chat world. Users could create their digital 3d character and move between user created 3d rooms. Google pulled the plug on Lively in December of 2008 about 6 months after its launch.
TalkCity.com was created in 1996 and like many chat communities saw great success followed by a percipients fall. However TalkCity's close came without any notice when they simply shut down rather than continue to fight a financial case revolving around their bankruptcy.
Meebo.com was an instant messaging and chat service provider founded in 2005. Largely funded by its founders and investors Meebo grew in size and scope. In 2012 Meebo was acquired by Google who immediately shut down Meebo and moved their staff to work on Google+.
Woo Media was created in 2007, WooMe was a Adobe Flash based dating site that integrated video technologies with matchmaking software. WooMe went from 5 employees in 2007 to 60 in 2011 when it was sold to Zoosk.
There is very little information on why Stickam.com closed down. They wrote a very nice blog post saying goodbye but said nothing about why. A report had come out that it was related to the amount of porn and child porn being streamed on the site but the source of that article proved to be a disgruntled worker who was later charged with unrelated crimes like fraud and murder... go figure. Sickam was founded in 2005 saw tuns of mainstream success and then closed on January 31st, 2013 and no one really knows why.
Sorry we got nothing for you. We searched and searched and can not find a single reason why teenspot.com shut down. It was up and working, things seemed to be going well and now its gone.
The Palace opened in 1995 and was a graphical chat room where people would chat with avatars they could move around a user created virtual rooms called "palaces". These rooms were little more than a background images but it allowed each palace to have its own personality. The Palace stopped development when communities.com declared bankruptcy in 2001.
A1 chat rooms lost popularity in the early 2000s and the owner decided to turn the site into a personals gateway page.
Even though the UK Chatter Box website remained somewhat popular it did not generate a significant source of revenue and the owner allowed it to deteriorate until it was no longer functional. In 2013 the website went blank except for the message... "We will be back soon! Don't worry UKCB hasn't gone for good." About a year later that message was gone as well.
Rounds.com which used to be known as 6Rounds chat merged with Kik and closed down all access to Rounds chat rooms on February 2nd 2017. As per their blog post.
ChatBlazer.com was one of a few companies that offered group chat room software, but by November of 2021 the website was shut down. Parent company Pendulab's website is also gone. There didn't seem to be any advanced warning as all the archive sites show no warning message leading up to November.
E-Chat.co, was a chat site that hosts user created rooms. It was very populal with 1000+ chatters online at all times but in October of 2020 they posted a note on their website saying "E-Chat is currently suspended untill further notice. Due to the abuse on the website we have been forced (by extenal forces) to suspend our service." They say they will be back but we've seen messages like this stay in place for years on end. If they ever do return we will update.
The web moved away from Flash® and without developing a fully functional HTML5 version of its software this closing was a long time coming. FlashComs.com closed in February of 2020. (We called this)
The shuttering of this chat room service provider perplexes us. It was well rated, mobile friendly and relatively popular but that wasn't enough to stop it from shutting down. Just !*POOF*! the site was gone and no word as to why. We're not even sure there was a warning for people who were using the software. The chatwing.com domain now redirects to Chatroll, a live chat software company.
AV Chat stopped the development and sale of AVChat on 1st of September 2018 and tech support on 30 November 2018.
EveryWhereChat originally offered Java or Flash based chat rooms but had transitioned to HTML5. They created a mobile friendly and good looking chat but it no longer exists. The website is up but the chat is NO Where to be found.
CamCom5 Chat was a casualty of the demise of Flash. CamCom5 was built for Flash and never made any attempt to offer a HTML based option for it's users.
We're not exactly sure BoomChat belongs on this list because it was essentially remade into CodyChat. If you were looking to add BoomChat to your site check out our Best Chatroom Software List for information on CodyChat and other chat software options.
eStreamChat was a PHP and AJAX chat script with a clean design but was a bit buggy, it went years without being updated and now the website simply redirects to a GitHub page.
ParaChat was one of the longest functioning chat software providers around. Founded in 1996, it had been serving webmasters for a very long time. That being said... ParaChat's free version was one of the more basic chat software packages you can get with the paid versions not offering much more we doubt this company made much if any money. Para chat closed all services permanently on December 31, 2018.
phpFreeChat, was first released in January of 2006. It was worked on constantly and produced new versions and features every year until 2012 which was the last time their GitHub page has been touched.
Userplane was founded in 2001, grew in size and was bought by AOL in 2006. Userplane's software powered many of the webs top dating sites and this was of more value to AOL than maintaining a user base across the web for individual chat rooms. In 2013 Userplane ended user services.
Digichat, is a Java based chatroom software package created by DigiNet Inc, the company stopped responding to emails and tickets in 2006 and was gone by 2010. The chat platform remained popular in use until Web Browsers began to stop supporting Java Applets around 2013.
123 Flash Chat closed in October 2016. While there is no longer any official support for this application, Webmasters who purchased licensed versions of the chat still have full access to its use. This means you can probably find the software available for download but if you run a larger site you are going to want to rent its use from a larger chat site because of known exploits in the software which must be patched
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