Why did Slack win out over IRC? (2018)

In other words: protocols lose to proprietary services.

I agree completely.

But we're talking about reasons people ended up choosing slack over something like IRC (or, really, any open protocol instant messaging specification).

The grand-parent comment raises good points, people want these things, being connected and reachable while not being connected to the server with any client and having a context later on. These are problems that can be solved but nobody has put effort into making a sexy product to do it. (and monetising that kind of product might be troublesome)

Realistically, people don't tend to care about how much ram they're using, that's why PWA's are able to take the jobs of native applications, and people are even happy about it.

People only care if there's not enough resources.

I still kind of struggle to understand why Slack is so popular within the corporate world. It is a good choice when you have some public initiative and let people swarm in, yes. But when it comes to private entities(I'm talking about large corporations), I really don't get it. I've been using MatterMost for years and while it had a rough start, at this point I'd take it over Slack any day of the week. Functionality is pretty much the same, integrations are much more simplified(I use them a lot to say the least and from my point of view, all the API's work as a charm) and at the end of the day, you are the owner of your data. So it is a genuine question: What gives?

I like the ephemeral nature of IRC. It's supposed to be for real-time communication, the "chat" in irC, not for keeping bouncers. Bouncers defeat the point of IRC entirely.

I also use slack btw, and discord, and matrix too, so I fully understand the importance of a backlog, and having server caching for files is much more convenient than using an additional sharing site.

IRC is not perfect, but for what it does is pretty nice. Having a customizable backlog per-channel would solve most of the issues you have with reconnects and people's expectation. I'd love this backlog to be short by default though (X/DCC is plainly annoying and it just breaks too often nowdays. Server assist, even for 1-on-1 sharing would be very useful. Sharing one image with a group of people while working on something is really, _really_ useful and having a common way of doing it that integrates with the chat is very helpful. Reasonable limits and auto-expiration (matching the backlog length or even shorter) would also be very useful.

We know what introducing file sharing does to a chat though. Instant memes pop up. I love how IRC channels look compared to all modern equivalents: just boring text, and minimal text formatting. If file sharing is added, I wished it would never be with inline formatting to keep it the same.

I don't care for search. Storing info in these chat mediums is a horrible, _HORRIBLE_ way to reference anything. Short backlogs are the only way to enforce people to store valuable content where it belongs. Searching through the backlog would then be no different than what irc clients already implement (simple look-back).

Keep in mind text-only chats are so compact that having a full day worth of backlog and downloading that from a cold-cache is still cheaper than getting a single inline animated gif. Just for reference.

I hate slack threads and how people tend to use them. I wished people would simply create ephemeral chats instead.

I find all matrix clients to be absolutely horrendous for exactly the same reasons. They become cesspools of memes and repository of information that are terrible to use. Honestly, the best way to use matrix seems to be gomux, or weechat via a matrix plugin, simply because these clients _ENFORCE_ a certain kind of usage that keeps the TEXT in the chat in the center. Sadly, both are incredibly limited. Cannot get ephemeral channels to work on weechat (which would be the "modern" equivalent of a query with multiple parties). Channel discovery is horrible.

But the backlog does help a lot for reconnections. So does the built-in file sharing.

It seems that the userbase of matrix has a different concept of what a chat should be, and that's why I still prefer IRC for now.