Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

IRC has a lot of life still left in it.

Here's a small sample from the FreeNode IRC network, from right now:

  |-------+------------|
  | Users | Channel    |
  |-------+------------|
  |  1751 | #ubuntu    |
  |  1620 | #debian    |
  |  1590 | #archlinux |
  |  1488 | #haskell   |
  |  1477 | #python    |
  |  1109 | #gentoo    |
  |   987 | #vim       |
  |   877 | #ruby      |
  |   815 | #emacs     |
  |   652 | #perl      |
  |   452 | #java      |
  |   417 | #lisp      |
  |   275 | #startups  | [1]
  |   190 | #scheme    |
  |-------+------------|
And that's just one (admittedly popular) IRC network. There are 6 networks with over 10,000 users, and hundreds of smaller networks.[2]

[1] - #startups - the HN channel!

[2] - http://searchirc.com/networks



I'm interested in how/why a couple of the biggest channels on Freenode have been left out: #bitcoin-otc with 484 nicks and #bitcoin with 1179 nicks at the time of my post. What gives?


There's also the somewhat active #hackernews channel.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/l95pvm6v7xtnyy1/Screen%20Shot%2020...


I'm not sure why you gave us a screenshot, rather than just typing out the network, and how many users it has on the channel. Feels like it'd be a lot less work! :)


Number of people on channel is in no way a good indicator of activity. There are very active channels with 2-4 people and totally unactive channels with even hundreds of people.


Yeah the number of people LOGGED in is totally different then active. I am always "logged" in just so I get to keep the cache of the dialogues. If one channel has 100 people you might be there all alone.


to show his cool terminal based IRC client.


netsplit.de has been doing statistics for who knows how long:

http://irc.netsplit.de/networks/top10.php




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: