Is IRC dying?

[redrumloa]

I have not been on IRC except for 1 channel in many years. I went looking tonight and found a shockingly few channels in the major networks.

Is IRC dying :?:

 

[Glaucus]

Probably. Hard to say as I haven't been on it in a while either. Forums are better ways to communicate with people I think. I would have thought that IRC would still be useful for file sharing as it seems to be out of the limelight and may not be targeted by the RIAA/MPAA as much as KaZaa is/was. But then there's usenet for that now.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

I have not been on IRC except for 1 channel in many years. I went looking tonight and found a shockingly few channels in the major networks.

Is IRC dying :?:

I think they call it "twitter" now.

 

[Glaucus]

I always saw IRC as a cross between forums and instant messaging - with all the draw backs and few of the benefits. Twitter is more of a micro-blog designed to be used with portable devices like cell phones. I've never used twitter, but does it even support two way chats? I though it was a one-way communication.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

I always saw IRC as a cross between forums and instant messaging - with all the draw backs and few of the benefits. Twitter is more of a micro-blog designed to be used with portable devices like cell phones. I've never used twitter, but does it even support two way chats? I though it was a one-way communication.

Yeah, I was not making a truly great analogy. Twitter isn't actually very useful and people join it, but they leave it at pretty much the same rate. The tweet vs. IRC comment was more in the sense of the size of the average text chunk - but the big disadvantage or advantage of twitter depending on what you want to do is that it is leader/follower based rather than interaction based.

Twitter is like powerpoint-television : thus combining two of the most potent forces for damping critical thinking and pushing "information".

 

[ilwrath]

To borrow a slashdot meme "IRC is dying... Netcraft confirms it!"

But, yes, I seriously think IRC is actually dying. Everything left on it fits into one of these 3 catagories:

1) File sharing
2) Lurking / Idle
3) Bots spam

There is no actual discussion anywhere, anymore. I can't recall the last time I found a channel that had anyone responding, let alone actually in a conversation.

Twitter is like powerpoint-television : thus combining two of the most potent forces for damping critical thinking and pushing "information".

You know, I never thought of it, but you're very right. A lot of the entire "Web 2.0" nonsense is much more about distraction than usefulness. A constant barrage of idle novelty is a great hindrance to actual progress of any sort.