Why Did Slack Win Out over IRC, Anyway?
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Re: Why Did Slack Win Out over IRC, Anyway?
#2Internet Relay Chat beat Slack to real-time chat by decades and helped define much of our early online culture, yet way more people use Slack. Why is that?
Re: Why Did Slack Win Out over IRC, Anyway?
#3Internet Relay Chat beat Slack to real-time chat by decades and helped define much of our early online culture, yet way more people use Slack. Why is that?
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Re: Why Did Slack Win Out over IRC, Anyway?
#4All those articles try to paint it as "open source vs closed source" or "simple vs complex" but the answer is pretty simple: the IRC itself was missing many important features. No offline messages, no multi-device support, no threads, no message archives, no message search, no inline images, no mobile phone support.
Sure, you could have added this as a separate component.. but as long as you claim "we are using IRC" there would be that one person without bouncer and web browser who keeps asking the same question over and over and whines if someones posts an image.
So Slack won on features. Turns out people can tolerate slowness and crowded interface, as long as it gets stuff done. Who would have thought.
Re: Why Did Slack Win Out over IRC, Anyway?
#5All those articles try to paint it as "open source vs closed source" or "simple vs complex" but the answer is pretty simple: the IRC itself was missing many important features. No offline messages, no multi-device support, no threads, no message archives, no message search, no inline images, no mobile phone support. Sure, you could have added this as a separate component.. but as long as you claim "we are using IRC"…
I agree with you. The pros about IRC are basically its longevity and simplicity, but simplicity doesn't mean better.
Re: Why Did Slack Win Out over IRC, Anyway?
#6All those articles try to paint it as "open source vs closed source" or "simple vs complex" but the answer is pretty simple: the IRC itself was missing many important features. No offline messages, no multi-device support, no threads, no message archives, no message search, no inline images, no mobile phone support. Sure, you could have added this as a separate component.. but as long as you claim "we are using IRC"…
The offline history is for me the big thing.
And the rest are features needed from there.