[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.