[dijit]

I agree completely.

But we're talking about reasons people ended up choosing slack over something like IRC (or, really, any open protocol instant messaging specification).

The grand-parent comment raises good points, people want these things, being connected and reachable while not being connected to the server with any client and having a context later on. These are problems that can be solved but nobody has put effort into making a sexy product to do it. (and monetising that kind of product might be troublesome)

[josteink]

> nobody has put effort into making a sexy product

Again we are comparing a product to a protocol.

I’m just pointing out that this is not a reasonable comparison.

There were multiple web-enabled IRC bouncers (closed products) which would be easy to use for anyone, including non-techsavy people.

But evidently the majority of IRC-users were fine without that and preferred the traditional client-server-protocol realm.

[dijit]

IRC is more than a protocol, it’s an ecosystem. You cannot simply talk about IRC in complete isolation.

It’s akin to comparing SMTP with chrome.

You have to include the clients and surrounding infrastructure.