A popular thing for many online gamers is to use voice-chat programs to communicate with their friends. Two of the most well-known ones are Ventrilo and Teamspeak. The use of these programs is most commonly seen in first-person shooter games such as Counterstrike, but they can be used in any game where team play is a possibility.
Basically, they allow users to skip the whole typing thing in favor of simply using their voice to communicate. This has obvious advantages: not only is it much faster, it also allows one to keep the hands on the game's controls - any online gamer is familiar with the term "typing death"; which is dying or losing because you were typing out a message.
However, using voice-chat to communicate also carries some disadvantages. I think perhaps one of the biggest disadvantages is that in a moment of passion, it is much easier to say something you'll regret than it is to type something you'll regret. There's more time to think about it while typing, and you might end up just hitting backspace instead of enter. Also, hearing someone cuss you out hurts more than just reading it. This can cause hurt feelings and destroy your team's cohesiveness. Another disadvantage is that communication can sometimes be less clear due to accents or mispronunciation. Since my native language is Spanish, I have met several people online who had trouble understanding what I said; a problem never encountered when typing.
In the end, voice-chat programs are almost a requirement for higher-tier competitive play in online games. Here's some links:
Teamspeak
Ventrilo
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