History of Ireland Calls
1996 - 2012
1996 - 'Mayo on the Move'
Mayo Ireland Ltd set up the 'Mayo on the Move' website in 1995 and launched it on Valentine's Day, 14th February 1996. The site was soon gathering 1000s of visitors per month all interested in County Mayo.
1998 - Irish Chat
It was decided to provide visitors with the opportunity to chat with one another on all things pertaining to Ireland and the Irish. Over time the site developed into a popular meeting place for anyone looking for interesting and lively chat on any topic.
The early years!
As its popularity increased some members began flooding the chat room with unwanted messages, bad-mouthing everyone and anyone, constantly coming in with different names just to cause trouble and generally being a right pain.
In other words as the number of users of IC increased there was an overall drop in quality. As a result of this many regular users and potential new users were put off using IC altogether.
2006 - Irish Chat, the social networking hub
For a while we introduced a subscription based service and set up a message board for members to hold discussion on all kinds of topics related and unrelated to Ireland. In April 2006 we took this to a new level by providing the facility to add friends, create photo albums etc - a true social networking powerhouse.
2007 - Ireland Calls
As "IC" became more of a social networking site we decided to move away from "Irish Chat" and looked for a name that would reflect the changes. We put a few alternatives to members and it was decided to go with Ireland Calls as this reflected the pull that Ireland has on the Irish diaspora and the site could still be called IC for short. Hence Irish Chat became Ireland Calls.
2010 - Ireland Calls Social Networking site closed
It was always a struggle to keep Irish Chat and Ireland Calls running. For a small company, run by one and a half people, it was too time consuming, too expensive and not part of the business model. We would have closed it down years ago if it wasn't for our loyal members pleading to keep it open.
So as not to disappoint anyone we decided to look around to see if any other website could provide a similar experience for our members. We came up with Rendezvous353 but didn't receive much support from them so for a social networking experience we now recommend our own Irish Chat facebook page.
2011/12 - Irish Chat - the future
We decided, to keep the Irish Chat Room open. So we are back where we started in 1998 with a straight forward chat room and a "Céad Míle Fáilte" to all interested in using Irish Chat.
To meet a bunch of people in Irish Chat login at irishchat.ie, you can also leave messages here:
