In my opinion, IRC does not have the features that Charme can offer right now (not looking at the security perspective right now): It allows smart ways to filte

In my opinion, IRC does not have the features that Charme can offer right now (not looking at the security perspective right now): It allows smart ways to filter your friend's messages. For example, you could filter for people driving from point A to point B. Considering some hundred friends within one group (like in FB), you could handle the massive amount of messages manually any more. So, these context things in Charme look very promising. For hosting I agree that it might be a problem. But normally, you always know one of these techy guys :) However, I completely agree with the last part: moving a user base is very tough or even impossible.