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Comment by kami8845 | Hacker News Reader

I don't want IRC. I want HipChat (inline images, ability to directly upload & share media, persistence, good searching, integrated video, HTTP API) but with non-shit native clients. IRC is a fucking dinosaur, I feel something like this doesn't have the capability to really improve the situation.

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1. Many people like the minimalism of IRC.

2. Being a standard open protocol makes IRC better than any alternative anyway. Can you use Hipchat on a graphing calculator? You can use IRC on one.

Though I love IRC, I do wish it has some features present in things like Hipchat.

I love companies that try to make modern use of IRC and monetize that :-) It's a dinosaur but it works and somehow still has a lot of users. Chicken egg problem? Network effect? Nerd 1337ness?

shameless plug: We're offering hosting for Quassel(cores), a distributed IRC client that enables access to the same user/backlog from multiple different devices: http://woboq.com/quassel.html

IRC is just a protocol, just like email, there's nothing precluding better clients. In fact Grove.io ("Hosted IRC and so much more.") offers many of the features you listed.

Whether you market it as "IRC++" (like Grove), or "HipChat with IRC support", is another question, but I'd love a service that had a great IRC (and maybe XMPP) interface, plus all of those features.

There is nothing about IRC that prevents it from providing those features, and many of them already exist in various clients. Ircle had video support in the 90s, Linkinus supports embedded media, and persistence is simply a matter of using a ZNC proxy (IRCcloud has it built in). P2P file transfers have been in IRC for decades, but it would be a piece of cake to integrate a media host into an IRC client.

The CTCP portion of IRC makes it possible to do just about anything you want, as long as both parties are using clients that support the action.

Fair point.

TRC offers persistence via ZNC. Some of the other points are offered by some clients.

File sharing is a work in progress for TRC, but a very important feature to me.

Don't see this as me putting you down. I just wish people started working on the next generation of group chat (which is a HUGE field) rather than just piling more of the same on top of old stuff.

Developer of the kiwiirc.com IRC client here (Unaffiliated with teamrelaychat.nl). While I agree that there are far better protocols than IRC for todays modern world, IRC still has a long way to go and is currently being extended to push it further in that direction. It still has millions of active users today so it's clear it has done something right.

Inline media, file uploading/sharing, mobile messaging, persistence, log searching, APIs, etc, etc can all be achieved with IRC and is actively being developed with the kiwiirc.com client that this startup is using giving it a great start.

Have you seen http://trash.io

http://trash.io/room/whatever_you_want to make a new room

realtime, drag and drop images, youtube, vimeo and multiplayer html5 games.

ws, redis, on top of a rails app on heroku.

enjoy.

Agree - for me, the persistence is the most important, something which IRC doesn't offer. I'm not always on, and in a business setting it's crucial to be available for messages at all times, even if I'm going to actually read the messages later. I can also find out what the others have been discussing.

Check out IRCCloud, they keep a client connected on your behalf 24/7 then let you connect to it when you open the web app.

TRC runs ZNC, which will save and replay messages you have missed.

The linux client that they released recently is decent

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