IRC is old, but still it is alive and kicking. One reason for this is that IRC gained that critical mass what has been mentioned in this blog space. Another reason, why IRC is still alive, is that it provides so easy way to communicate with your friends and colleagues.
I have been using IRC now over 20years. Before IRC I used talk to communicate. Compared to talk IRC was huge step, because you have "multi-user" support and channels, where you could hang and chat with other people. Usually channels are like interest groups and you can guess channels favorite subject from channel's name. This provided very efficient and easy way to chat or share information back then.
IRC is mostly a communication tool, but it can be defined also to groupware-class since it provides tools to do group work. IRC has been used to make some demo-projects to demo scene world. Some were so called multi-site projects and IRC was one key element to success. With IRC demo group members could have meetings and they were able to share their files over IRC.
IRC is still usable also in real R&D work life in big companies like Nokia. I think that there is no formative meetings, but there is special interest group channels and team channels, which are used to chat of work things or some not-so-work related things. It is easy to get help to some subject, when you can go to subject specific channel and KA-BOOM! you have lot of specialists of that subject.
I think one reason for IRC's success nowadays is also that it does not have any fancy look and feel. It is plain and useful as it is.
ReplyDeleteI also wrote about IRC last week. (http://groupworkers.blogspot.com/2011/02/irc-vs-facebook-and-ms-messenger-two.html) In my opinion IRC isn't so alive and kicking as it used to be (which is a real shame). At least many of the channels I'm on, are way more quite than before. Surely IRC is still used as you also said, on certain work or school projects, etc. But in my opinion people don't just "hang in" there as they used to...
ReplyDeletePlus none thing compared to instant messaging systems, such as Messenger, is the level of safetyness when it comes to private information. It's often the case in business life that the content of the discussion must be cept in secret. Therefore Microsoft's system that stores every conversation will just not do.
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