IRC (Internet Relay Chat)

 

    Nowadays we are used to communicating in real time via the Internet, using instant messaging services such as WhatsApp or audio and video streaming services such as Facebook chat or Skype. Just 25 years ago the origin of all these services was born, a protocol known as Internet Relay Chat, that is, IRC.

    IRC started as a project that came from Jarkko Oikarinen in August 1988 while working at the University of Oulu in Finland. It was 25 years ago when Oikarinen wrote the code for the first version of the IRC server.

    It was an extremely innovative protocol for the time, a service that allowed real-time communication over the Internet (chat) either in channels that allowed interaction between several users or through private conversations between two users with the added bonus of being able to exchange files and send them to other users.

But how this has affected our lives? Actually this programe was so used when the cybercafes started to appear. But when Meseenger was released then IRC decayed from it's popularity.

Anyway, Jarkko Oikarinen currently works at Google and, curiously, still linked to communications via the Internet since Sweden is part of the team working on Google Hangouts, so we can say that the IRC base is still alive in our lives such as Google Hangouts.