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Building on this - what happened to Mibbit? Axod used to post on HN regularly with really impressive load and growth stats https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=

by asb 12y ago

Building on this - what happened to Mibbit? Axod used to post on HN regularly with really impressive load and growth stats https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=axod https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=axod. It seems that after Freenode blocked it, progress rather stalled. To me, with some UI polish mibbit could very well have solved many of the IRC UI issues

davidw 12y ago
Yeah, that was kind of lame on Freenode's part. There are plenty of fairly accessible IRC clients though.
GreaterFool 12y ago
I've been using a free version of irccloud.com and as far as web-based IRC clients go, it is fantastic. The paid plan is rather expensive though. $5/month for access to an IRC client is a bit much. I have a DigitalOcean VM from which I connect through irssi; I access that using Chrome Secure Shell. That's my basic setup. And $5/month per user for the team plan would quickly add up! So irccloud for work would simply be too expensive; and that's just the client. Private IRC server (as a service) won't be cheap either. Or could run it myself but then I'd also have to maintain it myself. Slack hits the sweet spot. There's nothing to maintain, the barrier to entry for non-technical people is low. The apps are great and so is the web version. It evokes the feeling of IRC and adds convenience of instant messaging (e.g. @-mentions, notifications; irccloud does mentions and notifications too which makes it really good). So yeah, Slack is a cage, but a golden one. With a comfortable plush sofa and freshly brewed coffee. I can hang out there with friends and do some work...
prawnsalad 12y ago
Mibbit is still proprietary which is the same issue with Slack. The KiwiIRC webbased IRC client is open source with a free to use (no ads!) hosted version that is gaining in popularity. More and more existing IRC networks are enabling Kiwi with complete Freenode support also. UI improvements are coming up to make the most IRC actions usable via the UI which will make a huge improvement over many IRC options out there. Disclaimer: I'm a Kiwi IRC dev.

by asb 12y ago

davidw 12y ago

Yeah, that was kind of lame on Freenode's part. There are plenty of fairly accessible IRC clients though.

GreaterFool 12y ago

I've been using a free version of irccloud.com and as far as web-based IRC clients go, it is fantastic. The paid plan is rather expensive though. $5/month for access to an IRC client is a bit much. I have a DigitalOcean VM from which I connect through irssi; I access that using Chrome Secure Shell. That's my basic setup. And $5/month per user for the team plan would quickly add up! So irccloud for work would simply be too expensive; and that's just the client. Private IRC server (as a service) won't be cheap either. Or could run it myself but then I'd also have to maintain it myself. Slack hits the sweet spot. There's nothing to maintain, the barrier to entry for non-technical people is low. The apps are great and so is the web version. It evokes the feeling of IRC and adds convenience of instant messaging (e.g. @-mentions, notifications; irccloud does mentions and notifications too which makes it really good). So yeah, Slack is a cage, but a golden one. With a comfortable plush sofa and freshly brewed coffee. I can hang out there with friends and do some work...

prawnsalad 12y ago

Mibbit is still proprietary which is the same issue with Slack. The KiwiIRC webbased IRC client is open source with a free to use (no ads!) hosted version that is gaining in popularity. More and more existing IRC networks are enabling Kiwi with complete Freenode support also. UI improvements are coming up to make the most IRC actions usable via the UI which will make a huge improvement over many IRC options out there. Disclaimer: I'm a Kiwi IRC dev.