If only the big networks weren't so change averse, we could have had a new RFC for IRC that included mobile/roaming-friendly protocols, which IMHO is the #1 thing holding IRC back in the current age.
Does my client really have to burn battery by sending a PONG back every half second or so? Can't we have seamless roaming without disconnects?
XMPP works so well on mobile connections that I have been using IRC over XMPP almost exclusively for quite some time using a transport that maps any IRC channel to an XMPP MUC (#maemo on freenode is “maemo%irc.freenode.net@irc.netlab.cz”) and any IRC user to an XMPP user (nickserv on freenode is “nickserv!irc.freenode.net@irc.netlab.cz”). Even when the connection is gone for several minutes (like when using UMTS on a train), XMPP usually transmits all pending messages as soon as I am back online.
Wouldn't the XMPP web client Kaiwa [1] be “Slack for everyone” ? I am using Slack at work and at least from the screenshots, it looks that Kaiwa is really similar.
(After paying some registrar and ICANN gets its 13 cents or whatever.)
Pay to play DNS aside, this is really what the "web 2.0" should have been.
IMHO, an IRC channel has always been more functional than a "website".
It makes peer to peer easy.