4 ms·
I find it most interesting that they rely on irc internally. They work on one of the world's largest online communications platforms -- surely they could solve
by bonaldi 15y ago
I find it most interesting that they rely on irc internally. They work on one of the world's largest online communications platforms -- surely they could solve their problem in a way that gives it to their millions of users too?
- thomaslangston 15y agoWhy? There is no need to re-invent IRC.
- bonaldi 15y agoAnd yet a fair few people (including 37 Signals) have tried, because there's a recognition that irc is plain hostile to modern users. A real-time low-friction shared chat service would actually be a hugely compelling thing inside Facebook.
- Florin_Andrei 15y ago> there's a recognition that irc is plain hostile to modern users How so? (just curious, I used it before in a corporate environment, it was fine for us)
- bonaldi 15y agoIn much the same way that if you live in a world of Word, vi is hostile. Don't get me wrong -- I use and love irc, for many of the reasons given above. I just think if I could have all or many of its benefits in a way that all my non-technical Facebook friends could use too, there'd be something exceptionally powerful and useful. It's almost like right now we're in the days of pine and mailman. What we could have is GMail.
- Florin_Andrei 15y agoI see what you mean. We were all Unix geeks, so perhaps that's why it worked well for us.
- tedunangst 15y agoirc is hostile to the kind of user that 37 signals markets to. I don't know that it's necessarily hostile to the kind of user who works in Facebook engineering.
- nbm 15y agoWe do make extensive use of Facebook messages (many people, including me, make good use of Facebook Messenger on mobile and/or desktop) and of Facebook groups. IRC's ability to quickly create temporary groups, temporary membership (essentially muting discussion by leaving, or peeking by joining), bot frameworks, and multiple clients are potential reasons why IRC might be preferable for the sort of things it is used for, I guess.
- alexgartrell 15y agoAs I understand it, the main reason is that IRC is decoupled from Facebook completely (or should be). In "Oh shit, the sky is falling!" SEV situation we can trust (sorta) that IRC will be there.
- davidw 15y agoThat jumped out at me, too. IRC predates the web as a protocol, IIRC.