So you want to get into this 'IRC thing'. I'm also going to say (and I'm sure I'll get some grief for it) that I think there's a little bit of 'geek cred' action going on here when you can tell someone, 'let's chat about it on IRC'. While there have been group-based services for a while no (Skype, Campfire, Google Hangouts, etc.), the relatively open nature of IRC makes it easy for large groups of people to hop on a channel and collaborate easily. What I've noticed in the last couple of years is a resurgence in using IRC as a primary means of communication, especially for open source projects. Having been on the Internet for some time now (I used to dial-in with a 2400 baud modem), I remember using IRC, but gravitated to many of the services that I mentioned earlier, because they just seemed more user-friendly and feature-rich. The channels served to identify different discussion topics you could pop in on. IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a protocol, created in 1988, and was meant to help facilitate group discussions, via various channels. What I've noticed in the last couple of years is a resurgence in using IRC as a primary means of communication. Interestingly enough, all of the services that I noted above, while awesome in their own way, have taken a backseat to another medium for developers: IRC. In the ever-growing world of remote teams and worldwide collaboration on projects, the ability to get good, immediate feedback is critical to solving problems.

The main thing is that they were meant to facilitate communication.

Some of you may be too young to even know about those services, but I'll go out on a limb and assume that everyone's used either AOL Instant Messenger, Skype, or Yahoo! Messenger at some point. In many cases, they offered complementary services, such as forums or classified services, not to mention a pretty appealing user interface (for the time). How of many of you remember Compuserve? What about Prodigy? I'm asking because, back in the good 'ole days, they were popular services that allowed you to communicate with other people from all over the world.

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