IRC - The online hangout before, during, and after, facebook
Internet Relay Chat, or IRC as it is commonly known as, was the first and original open access public multi-user chat (excluding unix "talk"), yes kiddies, the Internet's old hands were publicly multi chatting long before ICQ, MSN, and well before privacy invading predatory sites like facebook were even dreamt of, in fact, back as early as 1988, and it's still a very active social outlet today, yet, rather unjustly, doesn't get the attention it deserves, perhaps this is a good thing, it's not like IRC is just for elitists these days, it hasn't been that way since the nineties, but it has its loyal fanbase, and contrary to popular belief, not everyone thinks facebook is the "in thing", nor will it ever be to many, if you want to make public comments, set up a blog, or share pictures for anyone to see that's archived for life, there's always your blog, or twitter.Sure, there is a difference, facebook and the like record what you say, even if you do not save it, and shows it and your shared pictures to almost everyone at any time and kept indefinitely, refusing to actually delete anything, only hiding it, override your rights by claiming copyright ownership on everything you post, let people know when your away so criminals can break in and clean you out, let the world know all about you, so you can become a high risk target of identity theft - well there ya go, facebook does have its purposes afterall
. IRC on the other hand, is a real time multi user chat service, you need to be there, there and then to see what's being said, your private messages go nowhere but to the recipient, your public messages for all in the channel, but not logged by the servers, and one other thing I really love about it, is there is no in your face constant server sponsored or paid spamming of advertisements occupying three quarters of your bandwith.Continue reading "IRC - The online hangout before, during, and after, facebook"