I still don't understand why everyone is so excited about slack, it really doesn't offer that much more than IRC.

I use IRC, but come on. It offers a lot more than IRC right out of the box.

* File uploads

* Embedding portions of links (tweets, images)

* A very good search

* Multi-line posts

* Code-formatting, including multi-line posts, and also snippets.

* A mobile client that alerts you when someone mentions you.

* Scroll-back history when you sign on at any time.

* Syncing between multiple clients.

Yes, you could create a bot or modify an irc server to do this, and then find or write a client that will do all that stuff, and an irc bouncer can fill in for a lot of this.

But Slack does it out of the box. Zero extra work needed.

I like IRC, but if you claim that Slack doesn't offer anything more than IRC, you're either delusional or using an incredibly broad definition of IRC.

It offers marketing and support, that's about it.

Nobody is selling IRC.

cough www.grove.io would like a word with you ;-)

Looks cool, but

>We're sorry but Grove isn't currently accepting new customers right now.

I guess with that pricing structure they don't need to.

Well shucks, that is news to me. Thanks for the update.