The discussion is about users who use IRC directly and consciously. Many of Twitch's users have no clue what IRC is. Imagine a new social app that used SMTP in its implementation. You wouldn't bring it up in a discussion about the popularity of email.
No one denies IRC's continued popularity as a protocol for broadcasting text over a network. Slack itself uses it. But it's dying out as measured by the number of people who say to their colleagues e.g. "get on IRC, I have something to tell you."
> The discussion is about users who use IRC directly and consciously.
From the parent post I replied to, "IRC's user base is declining". Every single person watching a Twitch stream is an IRC user, whether they know it or not.
How do you determine the popularity of something? How many people use it.
Android is extremely popular. Do most of the folks realize they're using an Android phone? Nope.
Does it mean Android isn't popular? Nope.
If you don't have a similar understanding, we'll have to agree to disagree.
> The point is more that it's dying out as measured by people who say to their colleagues e.g. "jump on IRC, I've got something to tell you."
Of course they wouldn't, you're already speaking with them. Slack is fine for trusted networks of peers (businesses), but not much else. I won't start chatting with any my friends using it, nor would I bother to sign up somewhere to get access to a random Slack channel/community instead of using IRC, where I also coincidentally wouldn't need any of Slack's features.
Of course they're all IRC users inadvertently. That doesn't add to IRC's popularity. If Twitch disabled IRC and switched its chatrooms to some ghetto socket.io app, most of its users wouldn't know.
> Of course they wouldn't, you're already speaking with them. Slack is fine for trusted networks of peers (businesses), but not much else. I won't start chatting with any my friends using it, nor would I bother to sign up somewhere to get access to a random Slack channel/community instead of using IRC, where I also coincidentally wouldn't need any of Slack's features.
No, what I meant was, people no longer think of IRC as the tool to use to talk about projects and communities. They used to. That was its primary use case. That use case is shrinking, so IRC is becoming less popular.
> How do you determine the popularity of something? How many people use it. Android is extremely popular. Do most of the folks realize they're using an Android phone? Nope.
This isn't quite true, is it? Most Android users seem to know they're using Android. I could be wrong.
Again, your definition of popularity is different than mine, but either way my post still refutes his point about the declining userbase.
> No, what I meant was, people no longer think of IRC as the tool to use to talk about projects and communities. They used to. That was its primary use case. That use case is shrinking, so IRC is becoming less popular.
There's plenty of other avenues to use these days, so the numbers have diluted, absolutely. EDIT: There was no social media, very few IM clients... But the channels I'm in have been steadily rising (Freenode). http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/irc-002....
Quakenet took a huge drop once it stopped being used to find CS matches.
> This isn't quite true, is it? Most Android users seem to know they're using Android. I could be wrong.
Obviously this is going to be anecdotal, but with the ~20 people I know who aren't technologically savvy, they'd only be able to tell you if they're using an Apple phone or not. My mother, for instance, has no clue that she's using a Windows phone. EDIT: I guess that really goes to show something about the success of Apple's marketing.
> Obviously this is going to be anecdotal, but with the ~20 people I know who aren't technologically savvy, they'd only be able to tell you if they're using an Apple phone or not. My mother, for instance, has no clue that she's using a Windows phone.
I think this has quite a bit to do with what class of phone they buy. Android is marketed very heavily in certain contexts when buying a phone, just as iPhone is. Walk into Best Buy and ask for help on buying a smartphone that isn't basic and Android or iPhone (or Windows phone even) will be part of the pitch. Similar to how if you buy a sports car you are probably going to know something about the engine, if not when going into it, you probably will by the time the salesman is done. If you are buying a commuter car, they may or may not distinguish the engine, and you may or may not care enough to remember.
Agreed, although I believe the end goal of my comment was that after leaving the store, the term "Android" is completely forgotten, whereas "Apple" is almost a household term because you see them everywhere in pop culture—movies, the news, in schools, etc.
>> Of course they're all IRC users inadvertently. That doesn't add to IRC's popularity. If Twitch disabled IRC and switched its chatrooms to some ghetto socket.io app, most of its users wouldn't know.
Saying if Twitch disabled IRC is like saying if Slack changed to an IRC core..., which is not meaningful when discussing how many users Slack and IRC have. Twitch has several millions of users of influence. If they didn't use IRC, IRC would have millions fewer users, yet, Twitch chose IRC. Some of Twitch is IRC, and some of IRC is now Twitch, and millions of people use Twitch consciously. Twitch is the IRC client.
If a proprietary IRC network that is managed as basically an API layer for a service that isn't primarily about chat is the primary tentpole for a platform...
That doesn't seem like a really fantastic outcome for IRC. I guess if you're looking to come up with a conclusion that IRC has more users it is a useful tool. If you're looking to see what the future of distributed and local FOSS and corporate software team communication is? Less so.
I don't know if it is reasonable, but that's what is always said. The primary argument for Linux popularity is always "Android!".
Also, in this context I think it's pretty relevant. My personal opinion is that if Slack was just an IRC client instead of having its own propertiary backend, it would have been a better product.
Of course! And by digging deeper, we can also establish that cellphones are popular, and that electronics are also popular. It's going the other way (away from generality) which lessens popularity, since you're targeting something _more_ specific.
No one denies IRC's continued popularity as a protocol for broadcasting text over a network. Slack itself uses it. But it's dying out as measured by the number of people who say to their colleagues e.g. "get on IRC, I have something to tell you."