I can fairly say that it was IRC that introduced me to the coding world (where I learned to code TCL scripts for Eggdrops) when I was in high school and made me decide to switch my major to Computer Science after my first semester as a Graphic Design student (which I only chose because my brother had switched off Internet access from me for a few months which affected my judgment apparently)
IRC.com Bought by London Trust Media, Pledges an IRC Revival
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Re: IRC.com Bought by London Trust Media, Pledges an IRC Revival
#12I'm interested to see how they manage to convince communities to use their IRC services over competitors like Discord when so many users see Discord as easy, free, trendy, etc. Of course services liks Slack, Telegram, Skype, etc, are also potential competitors in this ecosystem. >IRC Gaming (We're going to have literally hundreds of thousands in cash prizes!) I suppose literally paying users money is one way, but it…
While it requires having a service worth staying on once you're familiarized to be successful, paying users is a valid strategy when a network effect is important.
PayPal, as an example, is the result of a merger between Confinity (Thiel's) and X (Musk's) competing services. While I believe Confinity had started earlier, X caught up through literally giving people $20 towards eBay purchases if they sign up.
Re: IRC.com Bought by London Trust Media, Pledges an IRC Revival
#13I'm interested to see how they manage to convince communities to use their IRC services over competitors like Discord when so many users see Discord as easy, free, trendy, etc. Of course services liks Slack, Telegram, Skype, etc, are also potential competitors in this ecosystem. >IRC Gaming (We're going to have literally hundreds of thousands in cash prizes!) I suppose literally paying users money is one way, but it…
While it requires having a service worth staying on once you're familiarized to be successful, paying users is a valid strategy when a network effect is important. PayPal, as an example, is the result of a merger between Confinity (Thiel's) and X (Musk's) competing services. While I believe Confinity had started earlier, X caught up through literally giving people $20 towards eBay purchases if they sign up.
Ahh yes, price dumping, one of the big forces behind "disruption" see: Uber, Lyft, any number of startups growing by losing money, and one of the main anti-competitive forces the government has no desire in addressing. Don't have billions in investor money to lose? You can't play.
edit. bring on the downvotes bootlickers, "valid strategy" my ass
Re: IRC.com Bought by London Trust Media, Pledges an IRC Revival
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of all the descriptions of IRC I gotta say, that one definitely does not sound like it comes from a sober mind. Nice Scarface reference btw.
My apologies. What I'm trying to say with that overly-loaded statement is that IRC values people for who they are and doesn't judge a book by its cover.
IRC is a protocol.
Re: IRC.com Bought by London Trust Media, Pledges an IRC Revival
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of all the descriptions of IRC I gotta say, that one definitely does not sound like it comes from a sober mind. Nice Scarface reference btw.
My apologies. What I'm trying to say with that overly-loaded statement is that IRC values people for who they are and doesn't judge a book by its cover.
All good, sorry if we're being too harsh it's just a bit hard to grasp where you're coming from when staring from the outside.
Re: IRC.com Bought by London Trust Media, Pledges an IRC Revival
#16Oh man. The description of how IRC has impacted his life really hits me. I've been using IRC since I was in middle school, I've made and lost friends there, I've learned to program, I've helped others, I've grown as a person. It pains me to watch it fade as we move to platforms like reddit or discord.
Re: IRC.com Bought by London Trust Media, Pledges an IRC Revival
#17As a routine user of IRC: This scares – nay, terrifies – me.
London Trust Media is colossal. They seem to have control over freenode and Snoonet, two networks basically unchallenged in their niche. Snoonet hasn't been doing so well since Discord, but that's another story. They also seem to own Private Internet Access. If a player becomes too big, they'll change the rules of the game. Just look at the state of Internet advertising: A few corporations probably know a lot more about most better than you wish they did.
Re "IRC University": Practically every non-trivial network has its own software stack of some sort. Trying to teach people every kind of IRCd/services combination is more or less doomed to fail. Mainly because people usually just don't want to know.
Re "IRC Ventures": There's no money to be made on IRC, at least in its current form. Slack, Discord, etc. gained traction because IRC is fundamentally inaccessible. It does not meet any of the common needs of today: server-side storage of history, mobile-friendly data usage and session management, built-in uploading, profiles and profile pictures, first class support for emoji. Though whether addressing them is correct is another story. However, these would all need to be addressed to try and make IRC competitive on any kind of market. The IRCv3 team, which does have a decently broad amount of adoption, has had issues pushing through much more trivial issues. Hell, we don't even have everybody on the same page about TLS – QuakeNet and UnderNet are still plaintext only. QuakeNet undeniably intentionally so[1].
Mark me highly skeptical of this undertaking.
[1] https://www.quakenet.org/articles/99-trust-is-not-transitive...
EDIT: Seems I misunderstood some points, see also neatnosleep's response to this comment.
Re: IRC.com Bought by London Trust Media, Pledges an IRC Revival
#18Meh. I'm still waiting for the triumphant return of the pets.com puppet.
Re: IRC.com Bought by London Trust Media, Pledges an IRC Revival
#19I love the optimism. Really.
However, while IRC is a great collaboration tool, and one I also grew up using, I find that though users are anonymous and no one can see each other, there are still plenty of trolls who have many ways of getting under one's skin.
This utopia of IRC simply doesn't exist. It is still comprised of humans. Anonymous humans. And anonymity tends to bring out the worst in people.
Re: IRC.com Bought by London Trust Media, Pledges an IRC Revival
#20I just launched https://superthread.net the other day. It basically replaces IRC with a modern tech stack. Sorry for self promotion, but it’s a bit strange that someone else is having the same idea at the same time.