Never liked IRC much myself. You have to constantly broadcast your online status, and if your connection is flaky it just dies and reconnects endlessly until you're back to regular activity reporting. You kind of feel on the spot to act, since otherwise you're standing around awkwardly, and when reality ensues, you have the very uncomfortable experience of having 1000 people constantly auto-broadcasting that "yes I am in the channel and online" but none of them are doing anything.
Nobody could get a list of the number of lurkers on a Usenet group.
