chat dieing off

PingBad · Guru Joined: 05 Feb 2005 Posts: 2099 Location: New Zealand

Depends on the domain and the registrar, here in NZ (for example), you can lease a .co.nz for only 6 month as opposed to a full year.

youngblood · Newbie Joined: 17 Apr 2008 Posts: 66

Telume ya hes also right about irc isnt shrinking he hit it right on good job telume

Telume · none Joined: 06 Jul 2007 Posts: 17

Okay another point made there, that SearchIRC doesn't hold ALL the networks that exists, I've come across at LEAST 3-4 networks that aren't listed on this engine.

There could be at LEAST 5000 or more unaccounted for users, and they may all be spin-offs of a bigger network.

For example: In my travels my friend told me about this network called Sixlabrats (Six Lab Rats) which holds at its peak around 70 users, all which come from the now-dead initialized.org.

So again, this underlines the point that of course there may be more we don't know about out there.

Jason · Posted: Nov 15, 2008 2:33pm Post subject:

SearchIRC will never have all, but we do have most. The % of networks we do not list isn't going to be increasing by enough to make a significant dent in the total population of IRC that we list.

Our front page currently says:

There are 819,876 people in 378,015 chatrooms right now!

Back in Feb 2004, we had:

http://searchirc.com/img/searchirc_feb_2004.jpg

IRC is no where near dying, but far as I can tell, we are on a decline.

katsklaw · Guru Joined: 28 Jun 2004 Posts: 1122

Jason · Posted: Nov 16, 2008 4:32pm Post subject:

the numbers of networks searchirc knows about is not the same as the number of networks it is actively connecting to.

Actively indexed networks seems to be stable at 1100 for as long as I can recall. Many leave and join each week though.

katsklaw · Guru Joined: 28 Jun 2004 Posts: 1122

phrozen77 · Posted: Nov 17, 2008 2:08am Post subject:

With the advent of Bittorrent and other, more convenient, possibilities to get Warez i think IRC is loosing all those pesky Bottlers and whatnot so i think those are also to be substracted from the "usercount" one can see declining.

NSA-AcidBath · Newbie Joined: 06 Nov 2008 Posts: 76

That, I can agree too. Never thought about that haha. I think the biggest problem, networks are coming and going, users from other nets are moving to these new ones, and then the new nets poof and a few people leave IRC from there.. I think with this happening with 100 nets a week, or months or whatever, its OVER ALL decreasing the population on IRC

ButtaKnife · none Joined: 26 Apr 2005 Posts: 38

Also consider that with all of these little networks, most of them have services that have more than one pseudoclient, especially Anope. When you tally the number of bots into the equation, pretty soon it's apparent that the decline may be even faster.

While it's nice to have services that are easier for the server admins to maintain, it is a double-edged sword because, as mentioned earlier, anyone can start their own network these days. Many people view IRC as just a silly software thing they can run on their Windows XP computer, while I tend to look at IRC as a company or organization that needs to care about its users and the communities that call the network home. I do agree that it's a shame to see the larger networks shrinking, but I also do agree that they're not helping their situation. When I was part of a medium-sized network (~8-10k users), the staff really did not treat the users very well. Now, they're a fraction of the size.

Another very important aspect here is the lack of good IRC clients for new users. mIRC is an absolutely horrible client. It's ugly and not intuitive at all for a new user. It's no wonder that IRC is declining in popularity. There are many new communication mediums that don't have such a steep learning curve. When a good IRC client is created, IRC will get a second wind.

mentor · Posted: Nov 18, 2008 12:26am Post subject:

I think ButtaKnife summed it up best -- there are other communicatiom mediums out there that are much easier to use and learn. IRC, itself, must evolve if it wants to keep pace with them; otherwise, the numbers are only going to continue to decrease.

NSA-AcidBath · Newbie Joined: 06 Nov 2008 Posts: 76

Meh! I don't know anymore XD

I like to consider my network a home to close friends, but its not like i would ever limit it to just them, I will always accept client connections to whomever, unless of course I see abuse being taken, then I have to step in, as far as bad admins, I hire the admins myself, If i don't like them or think they are stingy and rude, they don't get a job regardless how many people they bring with them. I would rather stay small, then be big and have corrupt admins/staff.

Telume · none Joined: 06 Jul 2007 Posts: 17

That there's another problem, that some networks aren't really out to grow anymore. They're out to just have a place to chat for friends, which can also be quite the double-edged sword.

Some of the networks on SearchIRC have been listed for quite some time, some even since 2004 and they've maintained the same count since they first joined from what I've seen (I've been a regular since then I just don't like forums too much). Others however, HAVE declined and some disappeared off the face of the earth.