Chat with people near you

I know many of you are interested in Japan and even more so chatting with Japanese people. There is one site that you should join where you can find many people from Japan to chat with, that site is Worldfriends.

Worldfriends is one of the most popular sites in Japan to meet people. It's particularly popular among the Japanese people who are learning English and are looking to practice with native English speakers.



If you are interested in learning about Japanese culture, or maybe planning to visit Japan in the near future or even if you are studying Japanese and wish to find a native Japanese person to help you out, Worldfriends is for you.

In order to fully profit from having a profile on Worldfriends you might want to read on as I tell you how you can make the most out of the time you spend on Worldfriends.

First of all, what is WorldFriends?

Worldfriends is a website based in China where people from all across the globe join to find language exchange partners, activity partners, a date or a life partner. It is particularly popular in Japan as you can see when you've joined and started to browse profiles. The web site is also popular in other Asian countries like China, Korea, India etc... Needless to say that many people outside of Asia join as well mainly because they are looking for Japanese friends and/or language partners and/or dates. On Worldfriends you can meet People like Yoko K., shown in the picture, the one millionth member of the site.

If you wish to chat for free on Worldfriends you need, first of all, to join and have your profile approved. Then you should search for profiles of members that you are interested in. You can search by country, age, gender etc... Additionally you need to search for members with Open Club membership. Since all the services on Worldfriends are not free, as a regular member, you may only initiate conversations with members who have an Open Club membership. You will spot them very easily. If they are online, send them an IM, if they aren't, send them and email telling them you would like to chat with them.

In case you're wondering what Open Club membership means, it's simple: it's a paid membership that allows non-paying members to contact Open Club members for free. It's like the person who pays not only pays for him/herself but also for the other people who contact him/her. It also means that an Open Club member wants to be contacted so go ahead and contact him/her if he/she matches your interests.

Another way to find people to chat with for free is to have them on your network. How can you get people on your network? Simply by inviting your friends to join you on Worldfriends and encouraging them to invite their friends. Yes it works pretty much like myspace and facebook. Let's say one of your friends, we'll call her Lucy, is the friend of this really cool guy, we'll call him Jason, that you're interested in, but he's not your friend. You invite Lucy to join your network, Lucy invites Jason. Because Jason is your friend's friend on Worldfriends you can contact him for free. And because you're simply going to chat with him behind your computer, there's no need to be shy.
Another way to chat for free on Worldfriends is to have a well written profile with photos and to stay online on the site as long as possible. How does this work? There is a type of membership called VIP membership which allows members to contact anybody they want. If you are online and a VIP member wants to chat with you he can simply initiate a conversation with you and you can chat with her/him for free. This of course will only work if that VIP member finds your profile interesting and I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen if you didn't take the time to fill out your info and especially if you left your profile without a photo. It's also obvious that you can only chat with other people on WorldFriends if you are logged in so you need to stay online for a while. Certainly, after the initial conversations if you two are interested in each other you can always take the conversation out to your favorite IM program.

For having been on Worldfriends for a while I can tell you that the site is very popular in Asia, and not only in Japan but also in China, Korea etc. Of course it helps that the site is available in different Asian languages. I can also tell you that women are more likely to post photos than men. Guys, you really need to make that extra effort, the gals do need to see you too.

You will notice that generally the profiles include at least one photo of the member. I have a preference for profiles with pictures as it does tell you a little more about the person that he/she may not have conveyed in her profile details.

Even though WorldFriends is a social network it only allows adults to join, you need to be at least 18 to create a profile. They do not ask you for your credit card information to register which means they will never bill you without your knowledge. The only way for them to get your credit card information is if you choose to upgrade your membership but you don't have to unless you really must contact that person who's been sending smiles to you and that you find absolutely irresistible! More seriously, upgrading your membership is not mandatory. But if you can afford it and if you really want to talk to someone who is neither a VIP nor an Open Club member nor in your network, it's the only way.

Join Worldfriends and find out for yourself what it's all about.

Avacs Live chat for mobile and PC

Avacs Live Chat allows mobile phone and PC users to enjoy free live mobile chat with its 3-level client-to-server system.

With Avacs live chat, you are able to create public rooms that anyone can join to chat with you. You can of course enter the existing rooms according to your interests. Avacs also allows you to create private rooms for conversations with selected people. You can get even more personal by using the IM feature to have one-on-one conversations with specific people outside of the chat rooms.



You may fill out your profile and browse through profiles of other Avacs members. You may add a photo to your profile directly by using your camera phone or if your phone does not have a camera you may add a photo from a file on your computer to the web site.


Like social network Avacs has advance member search, based on all the data available on each profile.

More than just a chat site, Avacs allows you to exchange files, photos, music and ringtones.

If you prefer not to use your photo on the site you may opt for an avatar instead, you'll find a choice of animated smilies and avatars on the site.

Your Avacs account is not tied to your phone. You can use it on different phones, as long as they support Java applications. The requirement for the chat to work on your cell phone is to have Java support (J2ME).

About 300 models of mobiles and smart phones are supported by Avacs, phones by Alcatel, Benq-Siemens, Blackberry, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Nec, Samsung, SonyEricsson etc...

Other handy features are automatic country identification and room filters. Avacs chat has many country specific rooms. If your country has a chat room on Avacs, once you are on the site it will automatically detect your country and open the chat room available for your country. Of course you don't have to stay in there but automatically being sent to a local chat room is a convenient feature if you are looking to chat with people in your area. You 'll also find rooms by communities which allows you to chat with like-minded people.

Avacs also has one of my favorite features when it come to IM, history of personal messages. The archiving of your instant messages allows you to go back to your previous conversations and search for information you might need.

Beside their mobile version, Avacs also has chat rooms for PC computer users. For the chat rooms to work on your PC you need to enable javascript. All popular browsers are supported like Internet Explorer 6/7, Firefox 2 and 3, Safari 2+, Mozilla 1+, Opera 9+, Camino 1+ and even the Google Chrome.

Whether you use the mobile or PC version of Avacs there are no age restrictions which means kids, teens and adults are all allowed to use the public chat rooms and private room features.

You do not need to fill out a lengthy profile to enter the web version of avacs chat. All you need to do is choose a nickname and a password and you're in.

Even before you enter a specific room you can view all the rooms available and the messages sent by the users present. This allows you to evaluate the level of activity in any room before making your choice of which room to join.

The Avacs interface is very flexible and allows you to manage your rooms and users with ease. Within a room you can send photos, files and even video links. If you post a link to a Youtube video for example, all the other chatters in the rooms can watch it directly inside the room.

Avacs is an international chat platform. It allows users to chat in their native language whether it's Russian, Arabic, Chinese or Japanese.

When you create your own room on Avacs you get your own personal address that you can send to your friends or simply add to your blog or profile. When your friends clicks on that link he will go directly to the room you've created. Let's say that you create your very own Vancouver chat room, you simply use the link provided to you by Avacs and all the people you send the link to can click on it and join you in the chat room.

If something goes really wrong, you may send messages to the administrator is case you encounter any problems with the chat rooms or the web site.

If you're using the Avacs live chat form your computer, you may upload your own personal set of animated smilies or use the ones uploaded by other avacs live chat users from the top100 list.

You've read what I had to say about Avacs, now it's time for you to experiment it for yourself. If you want to chat with your cell phone click here for the mobile chat, if you want to chat from your computer click here for the web chat.