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In case anyone's wondering about the difference, a &channel is local to the IRC server it's created on, while a #channel is globally usable across the IRC network.

This was the cool part as others have noted. For the techies and nerds, # = IRC and it's like "cool, a nod to tech we know and love and now we have a replacement for". For the Twitter or Facebook generation it's a hashtag, "cool, a nod to something I use everyday and love using."

Or channel names prefixed with double ##'s.