It's way easier to connect and talk, with a better interface and profiles, there is inline image and video support, emoji support, responsive design for mobile...
IRC is dying and people are switching to Slack, but Slack is not here to replace IRC, is annoying to enter a separate login and email for each group, and it's more complicated to do simple things, they said they have no intention to satisfy that audience[1].
[1]http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/03/24/slack-is-quietly-un...
>“it’s great that people are putting Slack to good use” but unfortunately “these communities are not something we have the capacity to support given the growth in our existing business.”