IRC is not dead but I was also surprised by those numbers. Random Discord servers for niched things have more users than those combined and the big ones have hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of users.
I think that's accurate. People who think "IRC is dead" are probably in the wrong channels and need to invest a little time updating their autojoin list.
It's probably just relative. I would think the proportion on IRC is now more technical than ever before.
Twenty years ago, you would need to know where to plug a cable in to even have a computer turn on. For better or worse, the barrier for entry these days is a lot lower.
IRC has remained relatively the same while other services like Facebook or even MSN Messenger promised the world.
I don't agree that IRC is dead. It will continue to outlast many companies.
Slower probably. I doubt there aren't new people getting into IRC. You could've made your comment back when I just got into it, and IRC doesn't really seem any more dead now.
I don't, because I'm still using it! Me and a few internet friends have a cozy little community, and usually hang out there daily. IRC isn't really dead at all as far as I'm concerned, just not as popular anymore. It's the same as with people who complain that there's no good music anymore, it's there, they just haven't found it.
I don't know where you went, but there are still plenty of people using IRC. Not as many as were in the past, but it's still popular enough with the crowd of people I hang around.
It's totally not dead. I've thought for years that IRC is underrated now. I'd much rather participate in an IRC channel than something like, say, Slack. Active channels come and go. Some legacy channels are better than others. Some of them die and people move on to next level, more obscure channels. I just mentioned as an example in a comment above my experience in #python on Freenode which has been overwhelmingly active and positive. You also need to consider when the channel is most active, it's usually gonna be late afternoon and evening in US and European time zones. YMMV.
IRC usage stats are really bad. Steady decline from 1 million users in 2003 to 400k in 2012. In a time where we're talking about communication apps with hundreds of millions of users, not even having a million is pretty telling to me.
I miss how massive IRC used to be. I've been on the same network since 1996. We're now at around 350 users down from the 6-8k we used to have back then. I've tried other networks and they all seem dead all the time.
IRC is far from dead. My relatively unknown oss work has a channel on libera which is seeing ~100 message per month
Also Slack made the same move a couple years ago, first trying to appeal to IRC users at the beginning and then shut it all off when they had everyone else
IRC is a long way down from its peak both in share of attention and relevance, but yes, probably still more alive than Usenet, although that still also has many pockets of activity.
But then again everyone is on Discord now so no surprise
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