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Respectfully, I disagree. In many cases, things are popular because they are better/easier for a given audience. I'm a smart guy, have managed (and continue to

Respectfully, I disagree. In many cases, things are popular because they are better/easier for a given audience. I'm a smart guy, have managed (and continue to manage) many, many UNIX-based services, and have run several IRC daemons in my life. I still use Slack for internal use, and for our students. What makes Slack (and its ilk, though the title of the post makes a bias against Slack clear) so great is that it's simple, easy, full-featured and has a low barrier to entry to the non-HN crowd that is being asked, in many cases, to use it. I can promise you, out of experience and out of just plain statistics, that Slack and IRC have different audiences, and those audiences will not likely prefer the other. Also, I'd guess that IRC is actually the more popular choice. But the majority of the IRC using audience is too busy getting work done in IRC to comment on an HN post.

mempko 11y ago
> In many cases, things are popular because they are better/easier for a given audience. Which is the horse and which is the cart? Slack is easy because it got resources to be easy. Those same resource could have invested time to make IRC just as easy. There is no inherent reason why IRC cannot be just as simple. The reason slack is popular is because it got pushed hard and lots of money went into making it easy and popular. There is nothing inherent about IRC that would have prevented it to be just as easy as slack if the same resources were put for that work.
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  This is like saying Apple products are popular because Apple has a great marketing team, as opposed to because said products are genuinely easier to use (they "just work") than their alternatives.
  - petewailes 11y ago
    Can't tell if this is sarcasm or not...
  - njharman 11y ago
    But that is why Apple is so popular. They are a marketing monster! They sell a "lifestyle" and they do it extremely well. They tell you to "Think Different" (as long as it means buying an apple product). They tell you one button is easy and the best. They tell people what to think and (some) people think that.
    - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
      Yet they spend less on marketing then most major tech companies. One could just argue they spend their marketing budget well, but you have to wonder.
      - kbenson 11y ago
        Less as a percentage of gross income, or less in total dollars?
        seanmcdirmid 11y ago
        Both. Apple is infamous for its anemic marketing budgets; e.g. http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/04/apples-advertising-budget-dwarfed-by-microsoft-and-samsung/ http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/04/apples-advertising-budget...
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        They spend just maintenance level. Tech press and media does the marketing for them.
  - mempko 11y ago
    Apple products got good because of large amount of investment, not because they were popular. If IRC tech got the investment slack has now, it would only get better.
  - Avshalom 11y ago
    It worked for Nike and De Beers. The entire sports drink industry. The supplement industry.
  - nodamage 11y ago
    Sadly, a lot of people (generally die-hard nerd types) genuinely believe that marketing was the sole reason for the iPhone's meteoric rise in 2007. They don't place any importance on user experience and therefore can't tell the difference between the iPhone and the early-gen smartphone predecessors (Palm/Nokia/etc). These are the same people that are now confused as to why Slack has risen in popularity despite the existence of IRC, which (in their eyes) is technically superior.
    - pyre 11y ago
      To be fair, (as a Slack user) I'm not sure off-hand what Slack has that couldn't have been done on top of IRC. Almost everything could have been done with an IRC Server + Backend Services + Fancy Client model.
      - riking 11y ago
        Problem: "Backend services" - how many of the Slack integrations don't have public APIs and Slack was only able to do it by being a single company? Good luck convincing people to set up the API keys for all of those services.
        pyre 11y ago
        Why can't Slack run irc servers on their own equipment? The "integrations" would just be IRC bots running on private Slack servers, no?
  - ris 11y ago
    > (they "just work") Please don't say that Apple products "just work". We've got an office full of them.
    - shaan7 11y ago
      and I need to "put a USB keybord, take it out again" when suddenly my Mac keyboard and trackpad stop responding xD I'd rather have "easier to debug when it doesn't work" than "just works, most of the times"
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Yes, it's pretty much self-evident truth. "Genuinely easier to use", even if it was clear-cut thing, doesn't explain the levels of popularity Apple products have. Lifestyle branding does. It reminds me of Raspberry Pi. There are lots of more powerful boards that you can buy cheaper, but people still mostly buy RPi because it is the brand.
    - muzmath 11y ago
      Buying 'the brand' can also lead to much more documentation which can make the 10% change in price worth while.
- KirinDave 11y ago
  It seems very unfair to the thousands of people who have donated time, money, and services to IRC over its life span to dismiss it as not having gotten value.
  - mempko 11y ago
    You misunderstood. I am saying IRC would be as easy as slack if the slack team spent the time working on IRC. Their investors would never let them even if they wanted to.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    It is not an obscure fact that investing shitton of money in marketing will yield better adoption than investing the same money in the product. People "who have donated time, money, and services to IRC over its life span" generally focused on the technical side.
tptacek 11y ago
I don't think you're going to find evidence for the argument that IRC is more popular than Slack. IRC's user base is declining, Slack's is growing, and the numbers we have now suggest that Slack is already much more popular.
- late2part 11y ago
  The military uses IRC.
  - akshatpradhan 11y ago
    Yes they do. Check out ##security on Freenode. I also do some security stuff in ##GRC
- KirinDave 11y ago
  But back before the WWW saw non-trivial deployment, IRC was the #1 use of bandwidth on the internet! Something from the 90's must still be true today!
  - dfc 11y ago
    I was surprised when I read this comment. Do you have any evidence for this? If I had to pick some protocols off the top of my head I would have thought nntp, smtp, ftp, but certainly not irc.
    - gopalv 11y ago
      I assume that he'd be talking about the IRC DCC sub-protocol. CTCP and then SEND bots?
- thegeekpirate 11y ago
  Slack has 1.1 million users _total_ (http://www.fastcompany.com/3047819/with-over-1-million-users-slack-now-aims-to-get-a-lot-more-useful http://www.fastcompany.com/3047819/with-over-1-million-users...), meanwhile Twitch uses IRC, and has ~3.3 million per day alone (http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/01/29/twitchs-viewers-reach-100-million-a-month http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/01/29/twitchs-viewers-reach...), using stats taken eleven months ago while more than doubling its monthly viewer numbers every year. Freenode isn't the only network out there =)
rhizome 11y ago
I'm thinking a huge part of the difference between Slack and IRC audiences has to do with the $340MM Slack has raised. If someone gave "IRC" a quarter of a billion dollars, the differences might not be so obvious.
- itengelhardt 11y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't companies usually get a quarter billion dollars AFTER they have shown traction?
  - rhizome 11y ago
    They got $17.5MM in the four years prior to even launching.
- tptacek 11y ago
  If you gave "IRC" a quarter of a billion dollars, we'd have the world's most complex ncurses UI, and a security ACL system whose complexity would rival X509. And normal people would still use Slack, because Slack was able to make simple design decisions that benefit the overwhelming majority of users but piss off Unix nerds like us.
  - dijit 11y ago
    don't be naive, IRC was the simplest solution to a problem 25~ years ago, now systems have changed and things must be thrown away. that's just the nature of the beast, x.509 is also very old- but old things should be fixed or replaced with better alternatives, slack just fixes a usability problem.. but trades all privacy and freedom for that. Personally it's not enough, but google has a massive market share because normal people do not consider that their data or freedom has any worth. at least google is pro-free market in the way that you can extract data out later and migrate, I don't see slack being able to offer that reasonably. (or their incentive to allow it)
    - KirinDave 11y ago
yo-code-sucks 11y ago
Go suck a fucking dick Mr Smartie pants!

mempko 11y ago

> In many cases, things are popular because they are better/easier for a given audience. Which is the horse and which is the cart? Slack is easy because it got resources to be easy. Those same resource could have invested time to make IRC just as easy. There is no inherent reason why IRC cannot be just as simple. The reason slack is popular is because it got pushed hard and lots of money went into making it easy and popular. There is nothing inherent about IRC that would have prevented it to be just as easy as slack if the same resources were put for that work.

enraged_camel 11y ago
This is like saying Apple products are popular because Apple has a great marketing team, as opposed to because said products are genuinely easier to use (they "just work") than their alternatives.
- petewailes 11y ago
  Can't tell if this is sarcasm or not...
- njharman 11y ago
  But that is why Apple is so popular. They are a marketing monster! They sell a "lifestyle" and they do it extremely well. They tell you to "Think Different" (as long as it means buying an apple product). They tell you one button is easy and the best. They tell people what to think and (some) people think that.
  - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
    Yet they spend less on marketing then most major tech companies. One could just argue they spend their marketing budget well, but you have to wonder.
    - kbenson 11y ago
      Less as a percentage of gross income, or less in total dollars?
      - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
        Both. Apple is infamous for its anemic marketing budgets; e.g. http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/04/apples-advertising-budget-dwarfed-by-microsoft-and-samsung/ http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/04/apples-advertising-budget...
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      They spend just maintenance level. Tech press and media does the marketing for them.
- mempko 11y ago
  Apple products got good because of large amount of investment, not because they were popular. If IRC tech got the investment slack has now, it would only get better.
- Avshalom 11y ago
  It worked for Nike and De Beers. The entire sports drink industry. The supplement industry.
- nodamage 11y ago
  Sadly, a lot of people (generally die-hard nerd types) genuinely believe that marketing was the sole reason for the iPhone's meteoric rise in 2007. They don't place any importance on user experience and therefore can't tell the difference between the iPhone and the early-gen smartphone predecessors (Palm/Nokia/etc). These are the same people that are now confused as to why Slack has risen in popularity despite the existence of IRC, which (in their eyes) is technically superior.
  - pyre 11y ago
    To be fair, (as a Slack user) I'm not sure off-hand what Slack has that couldn't have been done on top of IRC. Almost everything could have been done with an IRC Server + Backend Services + Fancy Client model.
    - riking 11y ago
      Problem: "Backend services" - how many of the Slack integrations don't have public APIs and Slack was only able to do it by being a single company? Good luck convincing people to set up the API keys for all of those services.
      - pyre 11y ago
        Why can't Slack run irc servers on their own equipment? The "integrations" would just be IRC bots running on private Slack servers, no?
- ris 11y ago
  > (they "just work") Please don't say that Apple products "just work". We've got an office full of them.
  - shaan7 11y ago
    and I need to "put a USB keybord, take it out again" when suddenly my Mac keyboard and trackpad stop responding xD I'd rather have "easier to debug when it doesn't work" than "just works, most of the times"
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Yes, it's pretty much self-evident truth. "Genuinely easier to use", even if it was clear-cut thing, doesn't explain the levels of popularity Apple products have. Lifestyle branding does. It reminds me of Raspberry Pi. There are lots of more powerful boards that you can buy cheaper, but people still mostly buy RPi because it is the brand.
  - muzmath 11y ago
    Buying 'the brand' can also lead to much more documentation which can make the 10% change in price worth while.
KirinDave 11y ago
It seems very unfair to the thousands of people who have donated time, money, and services to IRC over its life span to dismiss it as not having gotten value.
- mempko 11y ago
  You misunderstood. I am saying IRC would be as easy as slack if the slack team spent the time working on IRC. Their investors would never let them even if they wanted to.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  It is not an obscure fact that investing shitton of money in marketing will yield better adoption than investing the same money in the product. People "who have donated time, money, and services to IRC over its life span" generally focused on the technical side.

tptacek 11y ago

I don't think you're going to find evidence for the argument that IRC is more popular than Slack. IRC's user base is declining, Slack's is growing, and the numbers we have now suggest that Slack is already much more popular.

late2part 11y ago
The military uses IRC.
- akshatpradhan 11y ago
  Yes they do. Check out ##security on Freenode. I also do some security stuff in ##GRC
KirinDave 11y ago
But back before the WWW saw non-trivial deployment, IRC was the #1 use of bandwidth on the internet! Something from the 90's must still be true today!
- dfc 11y ago
  I was surprised when I read this comment. Do you have any evidence for this? If I had to pick some protocols off the top of my head I would have thought nntp, smtp, ftp, but certainly not irc.
  - gopalv 11y ago
    I assume that he'd be talking about the IRC DCC sub-protocol. CTCP and then SEND bots?
thegeekpirate 11y ago
Slack has 1.1 million users _total_ (http://www.fastcompany.com/3047819/with-over-1-million-users-slack-now-aims-to-get-a-lot-more-useful http://www.fastcompany.com/3047819/with-over-1-million-users...), meanwhile Twitch uses IRC, and has ~3.3 million per day alone (http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/01/29/twitchs-viewers-reach-100-million-a-month http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/01/29/twitchs-viewers-reach...), using stats taken eleven months ago while more than doubling its monthly viewer numbers every year. Freenode isn't the only network out there =)

rhizome 11y ago

I'm thinking a huge part of the difference between Slack and IRC audiences has to do with the $340MM Slack has raised. If someone gave "IRC" a quarter of a billion dollars, the differences might not be so obvious.

itengelhardt 11y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't companies usually get a quarter billion dollars AFTER they have shown traction?
- rhizome 11y ago
  They got $17.5MM in the four years prior to even launching.
tptacek 11y ago
If you gave "IRC" a quarter of a billion dollars, we'd have the world's most complex ncurses UI, and a security ACL system whose complexity would rival X509. And normal people would still use Slack, because Slack was able to make simple design decisions that benefit the overwhelming majority of users but piss off Unix nerds like us.
- dijit 11y ago
  don't be naive, IRC was the simplest solution to a problem 25~ years ago, now systems have changed and things must be thrown away. that's just the nature of the beast, x.509 is also very old- but old things should be fixed or replaced with better alternatives, slack just fixes a usability problem.. but trades all privacy and freedom for that. Personally it's not enough, but google has a massive market share because normal people do not consider that their data or freedom has any worth. at least google is pro-free market in the way that you can extract data out later and migrate, I don't see slack being able to offer that reasonably. (or their incentive to allow it)
  - KirinDave 11y ago

yo-code-sucks 11y ago

Go suck a fucking dick Mr Smartie pants!