[jasey]

As the article mentions outside of freenode and tech departments / company's who are tech oriented IRC is dead or atleast declining.

Back in the day you could find a server to talk about your favorite band or hobby or tv show. Meet like minded people and make friends.

Today Twitter or Google+ is probably the closest alternative but are lacking the essence of what IRC was.

At scussion.com we are working on building realtime chat to be integrated with these communities (interest based communities).

I would love to just have a hangout to chat about sci if or sport like IRC was back in the day.