Until recent years IRC was very popular and widely used. (Or at least more popular and more widely used that it is today.) Surely it is still used, but my experience is that its popularity is fading. In my social circles it is apparently so that Facebook has replaced IRC. The other reason seems to be that as “our generation” of IRC-users is getting older and for reasons like job and family has no time or interest to hang on IRC-channels, there are no newcomers any more. Generation Facebook probably feels that the text-based, non-graphical commucation medium is not appealing nor interesting. For same time messaging there's now Facebook chat, and for example widely popular MS Messenger.
As I listed the grounding constraints [1.] for them, I realized that they are quite similar, all the tree of them, IRC, Facebook chat and Messenger:
copresense: no
visibility: no
audibility: no
contemporality: no
simultaneity: sort of
sequentiality: yes
reviewability: yes
revisability: yes
IRC has advantages like logging and that you can have more than one person on the same conversation (with channels). I've understood that Messenger has the same feature (though I've never used it myself). But even if these three are quite similar with the ways of communicating, IRC is the one losing popularity. As I said, my guess is that it's because of text-based interface.
I think it's very unfortunate IRC isn't the way it used to be. It had a unique conversation culture and it was also a kind of “hobby” or “lifestyle”. People were there and talking even if they had nothing particular to inform or to ask. And on these occasion discussions developed spontaneously on various topics. In my opinion, both FB and Messenger are mostly media you use for some particular thing: to ask, to inform, to arrange something etc. Of course, in a conversation with just a one other person the discussion can be informal and the topics vary and change. But after you've shared your thoughts and feelings with your friend on that particular chatting session, and you've ended your discussion, does it have a habit to sparkle up again as you spontaneously start conversation for example about your favorite films or the daily news?
What I'm trying to say is, that when the members in the communication situation are both few and well-know to each other, the conversation tends to follow certain pattern(s). And perhaps you already know your friend's favorite movies so there's no need to talk about them. When the participants vary more, there's also possibility to have some new opinions on old topics and to start to discuss on something very different. In IRC there's quite low threshold to change topic or say something “out of ordinary”, and this sort of unexpectedness isn't typical when you discuss with a friend. On contrary, it's kind of rude if you just change a subject to something which has nothing to do with your previous topics!
Even with all these advantages I've listed, using IRC is less common than before. Personally I'd prefer interesting conversations over modern, attractive user interface, but obviously I'm in a minority (again...).
References:
1. Clark & Brennan (1991) Grounding in communication.
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~herb/1990s/Clark.Brennan.91.pdf
Well in fact Messenger does support audio and video something that facebook and IRC don't.
ReplyDeleteI use Adium (multi-protocol instant messaging client for Mac OS) and in that way I have all my contacts of facebook, messenger, AOL and others in the same place. I find this quite useful, though as you say is the same people so nothing "out of ordinary"