I honestly don’t remember ever using open protocols to chat, sorry.

Born in ‘97, I was too young for IRC’s height, and although I flirted with XMPP, none of my friends were there so it was just me and a handful of like-minded people I’ve met on the Internet. I think XMPP’s peak was when Facebook and Google supported it for a while, before erecting the walls.

Now there is Matrix which serves a similar niche (albeit more successfully) but doesn’t seem that interested in being a WhatsApp/iMessage replacement for casual day-to-day use. Discord and Telegram have a huge social network element to them but in my limited experience, the performance issues in the very protocol itself and/or with Element (the de-facto Matrix client) hinder its adoption.