There are countless websites and communities using IRC that you may not realize is IRC. The old big networks are still dying off, quakenet etc, but there's a big surge of growth from smaller networks. Freenode, oftc,
The thing is, IRC is tried and tested. IRC has developed ways to combat spam, abuse, irritating kids, etc etc. That's one of the things that makes it more attractive than any new solution. And of course it's easy to write bots for.
I know I'm biased, but I expect IRC to have a real surge of growth the next year or 2, and take over somewhat from other less immediate forms of communication.
Massive growth from video streaming/chat sites - ustream, justin.tv, things are only going to get more real time interactive, and people are likely to go with IRC.
If people are likely to go with IRC in the future, they're not going to know that they're on IRC. It's going to be some webbed up interface. I've met countless people who think "nerd" or "geek" when hearing the word IRC because it's all text and no pictures, so the only way to actually get them on it is with a pretty interface.
Personally, I see Jabber having real growth within the next 2 years due to GTalk, Facebook Chat and MyspaceIM. And as with IRC having a pretty interface, a multitude of people using these means of communication have no idea they're actually on a Jabber server.
That's exactly what we were thinking when we added 'chat' to PMOG. It's a well developed standard and, given a suitable simple interface, most people won't even know theyre on an IRC server. Plus, it's realtime, lightweight, hackable, etc, etc.
