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0 pointskristopolous2y ago0 comments

ICQ? AIM? AOL chat rooms?

I think there were many options at the time.

Maybe the DCC transfer and easy scriptabilty thanks to Khaled Mardam-Bey's mIRC might be a valid claim.

Perhaps also the impermanence of the history of the channels afforded certain types of interactions that you wouldn't do with you know, theoretically forever scrollbacks.

I guess this brings us back to classical marketing about how you can't have a sustainable differentiated product based on negatives. (as in, this is not the bad guy). You need to have something in the affirmative

0 comments

JumpCrisscross2y ago

> ICQ? AIM? AOL chat rooms?

1988 versus 1996 and 1997, respectively. AOL proper was an IRC competitor, as was CompuServe, but their definitions of working weren't different from IRC's.

kristopolousOP2y ago

That's not a useful comparison. The fact that IRC existed in 1988 does not bring a user onboard in 2004.

That same argument didn't save WAIS, Fido, or Gopher. Nor did it keep Tymnet or Bitnet around and didn't give Compuserve and The Well a seat at the winners table. It also wasn't a saving grace for Friendster, MySpace, or LiveJournal.

Magnavox putting out the first home gaming console in 1972 hasn't made them a gaming juggernaut nor does Xerox run the desktop. Neither Palm, Go or IBM makes my smartphone nor is my laptop by Grid Compass, desktop by MITS, spreadsheet by VisiOn or my pants from Arnold Constable. I don't fly Western Air Express, drive a Rickett, subscribe to RealNetworks Rhapsody for music nor am I posting this on slashdot.org.

Citing an early creation date is a survivorship fallacy here.

The real question here is why didn't it die like everything else. Why is it one of the few legacy survivors?

JumpCrisscross2y ago

> Citing an early creation date is a survivorship fallacy here

Separate problems: getting off the ground versus surviving.

IRC got off the ground because it didn't have centralized competition with a capability advantage. Why it persisted is a deeper story. Lemmy is still trying to get off the ground. It, unlike IRC, does have such competition. As such, the old playbook is obsolete.

1 more reply

yardstick2y ago

Probably a few reasons.

Text only, transient/short life data, is a lot cheaper to process and serve than images, permanent posts, etc.

It won the initial buy-in of us geeks/nerds/hackers/whateverthephraseofthedayis who gave it a rather solid base.

It’s a very personal type of communication. Real-time, immediate, and to a lot smaller audience (more intimate) compared to web forums, Reddit etc.

And finally, I would posit that it did actually die. What remains now is small, compared to how popular the likes of Reddit Twitter etc are, vs how popular IRC was in its heyday.

1 more reply

toastal2y ago

You can join an XMPP MUC today to bring back that feeling and the server options are light enough to self-host on a home network unlike some other FOSS decentralized chat options.

MockObject2y ago

In 1988, IRC's competition was a VAX program called RELAY that ran on BITNET, not the internet.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointskristopolous2y ago0 comments

ICQ? AIM? AOL chat rooms?

I think there were many options at the time.

Maybe the DCC transfer and easy scriptabilty thanks to Khaled Mardam-Bey's mIRC might be a valid claim.

Perhaps also the impermanence of the history of the channels afforded certain types of interactions that you wouldn't do with you know, theoretically forever scrollbacks.

0 comments

JumpCrisscross2y ago

> ICQ? AIM? AOL chat rooms?

1988 versus 1996 and 1997, respectively. AOL proper was an IRC competitor, as was CompuServe, but their definitions of working weren't different from IRC's.

kristopolousOP2y ago

That's not a useful comparison. The fact that IRC existed in 1988 does not bring a user onboard in 2004.

Citing an early creation date is a survivorship fallacy here.

The real question here is why didn't it die like everything else. Why is it one of the few legacy survivors?

JumpCrisscross2y ago

> Citing an early creation date is a survivorship fallacy here

Separate problems: getting off the ground versus surviving.

1 more reply

yardstick2y ago

Probably a few reasons.

Text only, transient/short life data, is a lot cheaper to process and serve than images, permanent posts, etc.

It won the initial buy-in of us geeks/nerds/hackers/whateverthephraseofthedayis who gave it a rather solid base.

It’s a very personal type of communication. Real-time, immediate, and to a lot smaller audience (more intimate) compared to web forums, Reddit etc.

And finally, I would posit that it did actually die. What remains now is small, compared to how popular the likes of Reddit Twitter etc are, vs how popular IRC was in its heyday.

1 more reply

toastal2y ago

You can join an XMPP MUC today to bring back that feeling and the server options are light enough to self-host on a home network unlike some other FOSS decentralized chat options.

MockObject2y ago

In 1988, IRC's competition was a VAX program called RELAY that ran on BITNET, not the internet.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse