Where is IRC headed in the long term? reddit / irc ---------------------------------------------------------------------- weab00 · 2016-08-27 08:08 Where do you see IRC in 10 or so years? How much do you think it will change? Or maybe it will stay the same? It's been nearly 30 years, and IRC is still used by many people, although there are less and less users every year. I'm interested in reading what you have to say! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rdv_ · 2016-08-27 08:13 The power of IRC is within the clients and communities. It's a very simple protocol. If you look in to why people use IRC, you can understand how it will be in the future. Technology is always updating, and new innovative things are around. IRC will stay the same, but as people's lives change and they grow older, they will lose focus on IRC. The newer generation did not grow up with things like IRC, so they'll go for the new innovative tech out there. I own irc.snoonet.org and the beauty is in the communities. You give them a decent client to use and they stay loyal, making connections with others as friends, discussing, and are a part of something, which is most important. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- weab00 · 2016-08-27 08:18 >I own irc.snoonet.org and the beauty is in the communities. You give them a decent client to use and they stay loyal, making connections with others as friends, discussing, and are a part of something, which is most important. You're right. Those that use IRC are very loyal to it. I enjoy the small and personal communities. The ones where you can chat with someone for hours and wind up becoming friends. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- not_perfect_yet · 2016-08-27 10:22 >The newer generation did not grow up with things like IRC, so they'll go for the new innovative tech out there. Am fairly young, learned programming and doing stuff with linux about 4 years ago. IRC is *the* play to go to for near instant answers to sometimes very complicated problems that you would have trouble getting good answers to elsewhere. Also the easy ones, if you just have a quick question, waiting for an answer in a forum takes ages compared to hopping on irc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rdv_ · 2016-08-27 10:54 That's a small population. but I agree. Some of the smartest people I've met are from/on IRC. Most of them are my staff as they're developers/want to do things for the communities. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jonno_FTW · 2016-08-27 12:29 It remains to be seen what will happen, buy fancy web technologies like gitter and discord try to do what irc does and more. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2016-08-27 12:29 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Koda239 · 2016-08-27 13:17 Sometimes that's the downfall. Less is more at times. I'm happier with a simplistic client without a lot of the bells and whistles. I just want to log in and chat. That's all. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MD5HashBrowns · 2016-08-27 15:04 I like the simplicity and speed of IRC. If im on a 1x data connection, sending a fb message takes forever compared to IRC which takes milliseconds ---------------------------------------------------------------------- weab00 · 2016-08-27 15:11 That is definitely a desirable trait. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- weab00 · 2016-08-27 15:12 IRC lost 60% of its users from 2000 to 2012. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ejmarkow · 2016-08-27 15:14 rdv_ said: > IRC will stay the same, but as people's lives change and they grow older, they will lose focus on IRC. The newer generation did not grow up with things like IRC, so they'll go for the new innovative tech out there. I'm a heavy user of IRC and I believe users will not "lose focus" on it. If anything, it will either maintain the same amount of users it currently has, or even increase. Many users of IRC are involved in the Linux, Open Source, and Developer community, which is growing by leaps and bounds. So, I believe, in the aggregate, IRC will only increase in users and it will gain gradual popularity, even if very little. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FiendKing04 · 2016-08-27 23:10 So true man. I first got on IRC back in 2004 around third grade I think, and there's people I've met back then I still talk to near daily. The communities and people are amazing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- damiankw · 2016-08-28 06:23 Facebook group chat, with an IRC back end .. THE FUTURE! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- damiankw · 2016-08-28 06:25 I would have thought the time gap for 60% would be a lot less than that, after 2004 the only people left on IRC were IT related people, or people using it due to a website. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Saber_UK · 2016-08-31 18:26 [IRCv3](http://ircv3.net), which is backed by several popular IRC developers, is still working on improvements to the IRC protocol. Movement is very slow but thats to be expected when you have dozens of different implementations which are mostly maintained by people who are not being paid. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- weab00 · 2016-08-31 18:38 Ah, I see. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- j4jackj · 2016-09-01 20:30 i am 16 and i use weechat on a vps. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2016-09-01 20:49 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gettinashes · 2016-09-02 10:19 What else are people migrating to? Everything else seems to be short- lived or narrow, whereas IRC has effectively outlived telnet-chat and ICQ/AIM, and covers every topic imaginable. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- predatorian3 · 2016-09-07 15:15 I'm not sure how I feel. Things like Slack, RocketChat, and whatever other new chat tool is out there seems to be dominating my office because "it just works" and people don't have to mess with it, even though they're IT people, "engineers" no less. I want to say that with what I read in /r/rdv_ 's post, it is up to the client to do the fancy stuff. I haven't seen one that natively supports the URL expansion, or emoji thing as Slack does. I'm not sure all how to do that as I'm not a good developer myself. I think clients like KiwiIRC might do that, but I haven't seen others yet. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- cykros · 2016-09-12 06:51 Facebook, reddit, twitter, snapchat, whatsapp, etc. The insistence on "instant" falls for many in favor of six things at once. Six things at once on 56k was a pipedream; it's trivial on a modern connection. Beyond those, services like Tinychat (ugh), Google Hangouts, and other video or otherwise enhanced groupchats soak up some folks, as while the experience may be clunkier, it does come with enough benefits to make up for it. Heck, Roll20.net brings with it the opportunity to have full tabletop role playing games remotely in real time across a group of people with live telepresence. Throw in those who opted to leave text behind for voice with services like ventrilo, teamspeak, skype, etc, and the numbers really start growing. The truth is, no one thing is killing/has killed irc, it's just that the options are a lot more vast now than they were in the 90s. This isn't a bad thing, but it can be frustrating when you're just looking for a new spot to hang out on the 'net. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- cykros · 2016-09-12 06:53 Well, Facebook chat had an xmpp backend, not sure if it still does. It just was never federated. XMPP would be fine enough by me, as unlike IRC, it offers cross network communications (a la email). Facebook just did everything they could to take out all of the benefits the protocol had. As far as I'm aware, the last vestiges of it were removed awhile ago anyway, to bring it to a fully proprietary backend. Google Talk did much the same thing, though it at least WAS federated when it was still an active service. It of course also has since been superseded by Hangouts. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AnActualWizardIRL · 2016-09-20 14:38 I've argued for a while at work that we should just be using irc rather than slack, but the bigwigs seem to insist on it, because its fancy and new and invented by guys with hipster beards instead of unix beards. They like the integrations, despite the fact that they have a room full of guys who could smash together a git update bot in an hour tops. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- XavierNite · 2016-11-14 21:13 Many people will tell you that IRC is dying. My data shows that the population of IRC over the past 3 years has stayed about the same, with mild growth periods. There is no telling where it will be in 10 years, but based on current information, probably about the same place it is right now :)