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Comment by brillenfux | Hacker News Reader

Honest-to-god question: Why all those web chat servers? I feel something very similar to the shift from Usenet to web forums is happening. Is IRC really so hard to use?

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As near as I can tell, all the new stuff is a strict subset of what is fairly standard in the XMPP world. The only novel addition is that instead of supporting many clients, there is one blessed client, which is web-based. This means that rather than wondering if a given client supports some feature, or has some emoticon set installed and turned on, you know exactly how the client behaves and can implement features faster as a result. The configurability, flexibility, and client choice that XMPP offers appear to be drawbacks rather than advantages. Plus web browsers are so capable now that using them as a programming base for something like chat immediately gives you a huge UI step up.

Tone note: I'm dead serious, no sarcasm anywhere in there. Things that are self-evidently true to developers like "choice is good!" aren't always true in the market. Being able to count on a specific client really helps with the feature development.

If you're interested in getting in on the action you could probably do worse than start a startup shipping an open source XMPP server, using an open source XMPP web client, and doing the rather minimal modifications it would take to make it support some manner of embedding YouTube videos and inline images. (Seriously, like, two weeks, from a standing start.)

Honest question: who here is using open source XMPP software today in a Slack-like manner? If so, what is your software+config, and how do you like it?

When I last investigated XMPP for this, back in January 2014, I found that open source support by both servers and clients, for Slack-like features such as search and persistent chat history, were at least rough around the edges, if not lacking entirely.

> Is IRC really so hard to use?

Yes it is.

I've successfully had the following classes of people use Slack (across 4 teams):

* Wife (Engineering PhD)

* Dentist

* Martial Arts Instructor/Gym Owner

* EVP of Engineering

* Business Owner

* Student Loan Coordinator

No way I could get them all use IRC, and enjoy it. Also, Slack has much more capabilities than just a chat server. For me personally, the fact that you can easily upload documents directly and collect them in "channels" cuts down on the email volume I get.

It also works pretty great on my desktop, browser, and my iPhone.

grove.io

So basically Slack without the features and usability?

Slack but not being tied to a single dictated user interface completely controlled by a fickle startup's whims.

Going off on a tangent/rant here but I'll go out on a limb here and say that web chat is often (ab)used in a way that makes it the equivalent of global variables for communication: if offers the path of least resistance for sharing information (state) at the cost of making this information harder to retrieve, search, structure, associate, leverage in the future. Or to try another metaphor, it's the equivalent of dumping data on flat free-text files instead of a relational database.

Web chat does away with two (at least) properties I have come to appreciate in written communication: being asynchronous and contextual. Although modern web chat systems typically work even when you're offline by sending notifications, they're primarily a realtime system. There is the implicit or explicit expectation that a chat message (especially a direct one) should be answered asap, unlike an email or a tracker comment. As for context, there is little to none. In more than one company I've seen chat effectively replace the dedicated bug/ticket tracker system, with people polluting one or more channels with intermixed discussions that would be better off as comments on the ticket at hand. It's a mess for anything other than transient, throwaway stuff you wouldn't mind purging after a few hours or days.

Looking forward for a "web chat considered harmful" blog post if there hasn't been one already. </rant>

I've worked with two organizations now where Slack has been heavily used. There is absolutely no chance 75% of the orgs would have used IRC, even if mandated, the way Slack is used.

Even something as simple as having an avatar next to your name makes all the difference.

The real question should be what does Slack do that Hipchat did not? The designs are obviously much different, but other than that, was it just amazing marketing and word of mouth? Even the Slack founders seemed a bit baffled by this when asked months back.

If you used HipChat, you would have found that it was consistently buggy and incredibly frustrating to use… but I don't think that alone would account for the difference in growth.

I vaguely recall hipchat originally having a pretty shitty adobe air based app. Ever since they went "native" though, the overall experience has been much better.

When Slack was released it was the only one with unread-lines. I love this feature.

Multiple accounts was a huge selling factor for me, though that might not have been included out of the gate. HipChat only _just_ enabled multiple accounts two months ago.

https://blog.hipchat.com/2015/06/08/connecting-multiple-acco...

I'm in an org that uses hipchat. On the surface it shouldn't be bad. But it fails often in fundamental ways, such as sending push notifications on mobile and desktop, chat messages, entering a chat room on mobile, etc. Hipchat doesn't scale well.

Hipchat is good. Slack is just much better.

From inviting teams, to the mobile client, editing messages, emojis, youtube videos, music integration, team management, role management, bot creation, keyboard shortcuts, slack just does it better.

Hipchat's mobile client is garbage, usually requires strong connectivity to be useful, and the interface is inferior in everyway.

For example, when I get a hipchat notification on the mobile app, when I slide to unlock, it takes me to the home screen, and I have to find the chat that message came from. Via slack, it takes me directly to the message thread.

Flowdock was (and is) much closer to parity with Slack, and I really wanted to prefer it for various reasons… but Slack just got the UX much closer to where it needed to be.

That combined with a few key adopters are what pushed Slack over the edge to meet the need before Flowdock could.

Yes. If I drag an image onto Slack, everyone sees it. If I do that on an IRC channel, most of the channel members see only a URL string. Similarly: I can log IRC... if I set up a bot to do that. Slack comes out of the box with searchable logs.

It's not just having the raw capabilities in the system (and IRC makes some of those capabilities difficult; it's a very simple protocol). It's that it raises the lowest common denominator; everyone using Slack has all the things Slack offers.

No, but these web chats provide features that IRC doesn't, provides them better, or automatically.

Permanent history, embedded images and other media, persistent notifications without a permanent client logged in, no additional software needed, formatted text, more intuitive access controls come to mind.

> Permanent history

Slack frequently does not even offer this.

> embedded images and other media

Many IRC clients do offer this

> persistent notifications

I only get notifications when my client isn't logged in via Email. I can get this, and other options, with an IRC bouncer.

> additional software needed

There are web IRC clients.

> more intuitive access controls

About the same between Slack and IRC clients here. Click on a channel in the sidebar. Right click for more options. Type and hit return to send messages.

I use Slack, not IRC, but these aren't the real advantages for Slack over IRC.

> > embedded images and other media

> Many IRC clients do offer this

Can you list some?

Limechat, IRC Cloud, KiwiIRC...

Since the protocol itself supports file sharing between users and within channels, and many (most?) clients display previews of internet media links, embedded media is very straightforward in IRC.

Textual[0], my preferred client for OS X, does this. I know kthers exist, but can't recall their names right now, sorry.

[0] https://www.codeux.com/textual/

If you're talking to someone who isn't technical, they will find IRC very, very difficult to use. Try getting your mom (or your sales team) to use IRC as the only communication channel... it doesn't work at all.

The reason Slack works is that it's IRC with a great UX and easy-to-use clients on every device. The integrations and search are an added bonus, but the piece that separates it is a fantastic, fantastic UX.

IRC is great, and I will stick with it. The issue is the rest of the org wants chat too, they can't even setup email. Slack is for them.

IRC doesn't have rich media support, and without setting up a bit of backend work, you will just have an ephermeral chatroom.

IRC might not, but an irc -client- can. :)

web-based IRC is ubiquitous too. kiwiirc makes a free modern-looking client.

that's how i used freenode for the longest time.

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