A Love Letter To Internet Relay Chat — The Original Social Media That Is Still With Us Today
“Although kids these days tend to hang out on so-called “Social Media”, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was first, by decades. IRC is a real-time communication technology that allows people to socialize online in both chat rooms and private chat sessions. As a decentralized communication protocol, anyone can set up an IRC server and connect multiple servers into networks, with the source code for these servers readily available ever since its inception by a student, and IRC clients are correspondingly very easy to write.”
Yep, even though it was the first, and was around before today's youngsters were even born, the fact is IRC is still around. With so many becoming disenchanted with all the trackers, adverts, high bandwidth requirements, and bloat of modern social networks, there is still IRC, and it works much the same as it did way back when. It's true, it is more a network that people escaped to, and not from.
I actually use IRC daily, even if it is just posting to my own two channels I manage there. I also suspect that IRC will be around still long after other networks have disappeared. Not only that, but I'm just wondering if it won't get “rediscovered” by today's youth at some point, in the quest to find something simpler and more pure as a social network.
There are quite a few IRC clients around, but something that may help with onboarding of brand-new users is also having a really user-friendly client that obscures some of the slash commands. I know IRC purists will turn their noses up at this, but remember attracting new blood also often means offering new interfaces.
My channel is called #
gadgeteerza and is on the Libera IRC server. If you want to try IRC out without installing a client or a server, you can just head to
https://web.libera.chat in your browser and try listing and joining channels.
There is an interesting video to watch about IRC at the linked article below.
See
A Love Letter To Internet Relay Chat
Although kids these days tend to hang out on so-called “Social Media”, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was first, by decades. IRC is a real-time communication technology that allows people to…
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