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Is IRC really a failed endeavor? I would consider something to be a failure if it never took off the ground, instead we have a protocol that is over 30 years ol

by aquova 7y ago

Is IRC really a failed endeavor? I would consider something to be a failure if it never took off the ground, instead we have a protocol that is over 30 years old being finally supplanted with newer technologies. There is no inherent reason why IRC failed, except that it was designed with the sensibilities of 1989 in mind, but the requirements of the modern day are not what they used to be. I enjoy the simplicity of IRC as much as the next guy, but when you have things such as a lack of chat history availability being something you have to work around, I understand why it has been supplanted by newer products, as has a vast majority of things from those days.

Frost1x 7y ago
I didn't even bother reading the article after reading the headline. As you pointed out, IRC was far from a failure. Even with the coming and going of all sorts of realtime chat networks in the 1990s and 2000s, IRC still maintained vibrant stable communities of users. Freenode was a great more modern example. It's succeeded through a whole variety of what one could more reasonably consider 'fad' technologies.
danShumway 7y ago
Agreed. It's so weird to look at a project/protocol and think that anything less than eternal market dominance is failure. IRC heavily shaped the modern web, and had market dominance for decades, and built so much user loyalty that die-hard fans are still refusing to migrate off today[0]. IRC isn't the future of chat. But it is completely normal, and often even desirable that successful things should someday die when new paradigms become more useful. The only way to call IRC a failure is to have such a narrow definition of success that almost nothing in the world could ever be considered successful. Discord is 5 years old. I guarantee you Discord is not going to last 30 years before everyone migrates to a new platform. It probably won't even last 10 years. Matrix is (in my mind) the future of open chat. If Matrix ends up lasting 30 years before we come up with something better -- and if it gets even half of the market penetration that IRC got -- then I'll be ecstatic. That would be success beyond my wildest dreams. [0]: https://xkcd.com/1782/ https://xkcd.com/1782/
dehrmann 7y ago
> Is IRC really a failed endeavor AIM not pivoting its social graph to be Facebook. That's a failure.
- icedchai 7y ago
  AIM could’ve been Slack, too. Many companies used it for internal communications
- basch 7y ago
  Even to be a sms replacement. But I wholeheartedly agree, AOL and AIM failing to become Facebook is an all time failure.

by aquova 7y ago

Frost1x 7y ago

I didn't even bother reading the article after reading the headline. As you pointed out, IRC was far from a failure. Even with the coming and going of all sorts of realtime chat networks in the 1990s and 2000s, IRC still maintained vibrant stable communities of users. Freenode was a great more modern example. It's succeeded through a whole variety of what one could more reasonably consider 'fad' technologies.

danShumway 7y ago

Agreed. It's so weird to look at a project/protocol and think that anything less than eternal market dominance is failure. IRC heavily shaped the modern web, and had market dominance for decades, and built so much user loyalty that die-hard fans are still refusing to migrate off today[0]. IRC isn't the future of chat. But it is completely normal, and often even desirable that successful things should someday die when new paradigms become more useful. The only way to call IRC a failure is to have such a narrow definition of success that almost nothing in the world could ever be considered successful. Discord is 5 years old. I guarantee you Discord is not going to last 30 years before everyone migrates to a new platform. It probably won't even last 10 years. Matrix is (in my mind) the future of open chat. If Matrix ends up lasting 30 years before we come up with something better -- and if it gets even half of the market penetration that IRC got -- then I'll be ecstatic. That would be success beyond my wildest dreams. [0]: https://xkcd.com/1782/ https://xkcd.com/1782/

dehrmann 7y ago

> Is IRC really a failed endeavor AIM not pivoting its social graph to be Facebook. That's a failure.

icedchai 7y ago
AIM could’ve been Slack, too. Many companies used it for internal communications
basch 7y ago
Even to be a sms replacement. But I wholeheartedly agree, AOL and AIM failing to become Facebook is an all time failure.