[el_cujo]

>There are some great alternatives. I’m not going to tell you to go use IRC like some cranky old Thinkpad-toting unixbeard who doesn’t recognize that mobile apps are a hard requirement for meaningful social collaboration these days. IRC is a total nonstarter for this use case for many reasons which have been written about before.

I'm not really a heavy IRC user, but is it really that hard for somebody to make a slick IRC frontend with a mobile app as well? I would think that IRC already existing takes away the hardest part for making a chat system like this.

[shadowgovt]

IRC's protocol actually makes that challenging; it's chatty and wants a persistent network connection. Mobile devices minimize battery life by minimizing messages per second and only keeping network connections live when necessary.

[gpanders]

Riot[1] can communicate with Freenode IRC channels and has a decent mobile app.

[1]: https://riot.im