We can dictate the future of IRC

[PetDetective]

I would like to comment on this subject, perhaps it has already been said, perhaps not...

I've been using IRC for over 12 years now.

My first step was on DALnet, spend most of my IRC days there untill gradually people left, the servers became unstable and the Asian community grew.
Then I moved to Undernet for about 3 years, then 3 years ago left to Quakenet where I can still be found.

I have seen plenty of people come and go and I would like to share my thoughts with you all, that is, anyone who cares for IRC out there.

I run two major football channels and during this period of time I've realized that the technology around is in innovation while IRC is staying behind.
Sure, most of you that just read that line are thinking "IRC is old fashioned and theres not many ways to innovate it" but I disagree.
Within time I've tried to integrate for my channel & user's purpose the new technology, mostly by scripts since thats the only way I can think of.
So now users in my room can taste a few of these so called technology innovations.
I use a twitter script to relay Football statistics to my room and follow some bloggers the users really like, I use a RSS news script to relay news to the channel and a script for Live scores, of course this can all be found over the website and if you will look hard enough you could probably find it all in a single website, however, even though we talk down on IRC, in many ways theres no chat feature that can provide you to talk in a few different rooms, in the same time, with the same client. (you'd probably have to open new tabs for it), so yes, in order to read news you still have to open an explorer/Mozilla, but now using that integration people can filter out the news they don't want to read and only read specific things.

Another problem I have is when the Football season is over, then during the summer plenty of users leave because theres not much to chat about (unlike any usual chat room who you can always discuss everything) - my solution to that was to try and find a few coders to code us a nice addicting game that would keep people around during the low-tide period, unfortunately, no coder is too eager to code that much for no profit.

In general what I`m trying to say is, that in many cases there are ways to innovate and at least preserve the current amount of users you have.

In my personal opinion, there are also ways to bring in new users.

For example, over the several weeks I`ve been using twitter to contact a few figures within the Football World and ask them to join over for a Q&A session - My own users can ask their favorite blogger/football player questions they could never ask unless they have the right connections, we've created a lot of hype around it and even the network's PR team is helping us out, in our recent Q&A we've announced it on our Twitter account, the figure (who has 40k followers on twitter) retweeted it, and TWITTER users actually joined IRC for that Q&A session - 'new technology' meets 'old technology'

IRC really suffers from a bad PR.
The 'Facebook' generation doesn't even know what IRC is (most likley) but theres no one to promote IRC because either they can't generate any money of it or don't see the point, thats what I've been trying to do.

I know each server has its on philosophy, and having so many servers around will do the opposite then what we want it, users spreading on different servers decreased the peak of the big servers, and then when users in each server decrease naturally, some just disappear.

It would be nice if the admins of the few big servers would come together and discuss of ways how to benefit each other and benefit IRC as a whole, If my room which at its peak has 200 users can get people to talk about it on Twitter, I`m sure servers with 40-90k could find ways to promote them self and offer their services to either websites or company.

We must all think outside the box and think what we can do to work together and preserve our beloved IRC.

* I also think its about time someone designs a new client that could integrate new-technology with old-technology, perhaps a built in RSS news bar, stuff like that...

Would love to hear your comments.

[SATAN-HHH]

You do make a few interesting points. I believe Irc has mainly gotten a bad rap due to the whole file-sharing/warez scene. It could also be said that the "disappearance" of that group (whether just leaving Irc or going to private servers that aren't advertised) is the reason that Irc has shrank a lot. One of my thoughts was that the population was just returning back to what was normal before the warez scene blew up on Irc.

As far as the technology within Irc, it has been said a number of times on here that it's not impossible to innovate it, there just doesn't seem to be a significant interest in doing so for whatever reasons.

The bad PR part would, again, be two fold. One is the bad PR from the file-sharing that became prominent which I mentioned above, which I believe has turned more of the crowd that would stick around and enjoy Irc off from using it. You are definitely correct that the current generation
is or seems to be largely unaware of what IRC is. I've mentioned it a number of time in places, and gotten the "huh? what is that?" response. It would be up to the IRC community to spread through word-of-mouth in order for IRC to receive recognition.

Far as the admins of big networks getting together, that would be a nice thought, the problem is actually making that come to fruition. It would probably require someone with a lot of commitment and dedication when it comes to IRC to act as a spokesperson, who would talk to those groups and push for it to happen.

Just my thoughts on the subject.

[PetDetective]

I would like to continue this discussion

SATAN-HHH, a proof of what innovation can do:

I had a well known journalist over for a chat session with our fans.

Our website hits are usually around 70 visits per day, on that day he tweeted the chat session on twitter to his 45k followers and they used a webchat to connect to IRC.

Result: A new channel peak of 209 users.

Website hits: 1079 (for that day).

5 new Registered users on our site, about 50 new followers for account on twitter, they are now "following us for future sessions like that"

This is me trying to spread the word.

I saw someone's comment saying "That webchat client looks like it came from 1995" - Can anyone recommend a good webchat client?

[GigIRC]

Try qwebirc it is fantastic and with the added feature of your fanbase being able to run the webclient wizard and add it to their website look here for example --> http://gigirc.com/livechat <-- we use Atheme Services so we use Iris which is a fork of qwebirc.


cheers

[Bertrum]

http://lightirc.com <-- my favourite web client, it is really easy to use, and can be customised to your desire..

http://irc-wiki.org lists a few web clients if you want to check it out.

[PetDetective]

Another example of just how we're trying to keep and gain more interest around our chat room and IRC in general.

My room has contacted a well known site and made an agreement with them, which we will be promoting very soon.

We made a short announcement about it last night:

We are going to run a trivia competition with the winner awarded a £99.99 valued boot (ONE boot) signed by Real Madrid midfielder Kaka!

I really hope our attempts will encourage you to think of ways to keep your room active, growing and remind everyone, we're here and we're not going anywhere.

[Snerf]

As the programmer of an IRC Client, which I am currently in the process of writing a new version, thinking about adding some "new technology" into the client would be a cool idea. RSS News Reader, showing twitter posts, etc, it would just be a matter of writing the plugins to do so.

[PetDetective]

That sounds like really good stuff Snerf, great to see someone who contributes and a new IRC client with some "new technology" could definitely to endear oneself to try it out, though don't forget people are also interested in a 'simple' client, easy to use, not complicated, which you don't have to set up too many things, I look forward to your version and can try and help with ideas if you're interested.

GREAT INITIATIVE!

[SATAN-HHH]

That's some great stuff. I'm glad to see that there are some who are still trying to keep it alive (PetDetective) and people are still interested in developing stuff related to Irc. Hopefully trying to get the word out that IRC is still here will create a resurgence in interest. Let me know how it is all going.

[GigIRC]

IRC has taken a massive hit since facebook emerged, which has seen an exodus of some 125,000 users [source netsplit.de] it seems that the IRC stalwarts and IRC tragics remain yet in time IRC will regrow maybe not to the figures of yesteryear yet i truly believe that IRC shall survive.

Timmy|GigIRC

[Bertrum]

[Darkhaven]

[SATAN-HHH]

If time has shown one thing, it is that people tend to be quite loyal to and stick with something they enjoy. There has been many things on the internet that have survived quite a bit beyond the time when it was considered "past-life" (Star Wars Jedi Knight Academy as an example). I think it would be quite a long time before everyone completely gave up on irc. As was mentioned before in this thread, there are the IRC stalwarts and tragics that will be there.

[Kite2006]

Take a look at this http://www.net-bits.net/ircwx.aspx

[Bertrum]

That's an interesting site Kite2006