I met some of the most important people in my life through IRC. I would not have chosen my current career path without the guidance of the many friends I made over the years on various IRC networks and channels.

It was also a great place to vent anonymously when I was at the lowest points of my life, in a judgement free environment. I don’t think any social network will come close to capturing the effect of IRC. Decentralization and federation are what makes it a great protocol, IMO.

But its not really a social network...BBSs were/are great too! Plus BBs let you actually manage content versus just chat and link. IRC is great and always will be but a social network it is not...and I doubt we are gonna see any real revival.

Irc created more new social connections than many networks that came after. Same goes for bbs. We need to find the next thing that truly connects people.

"Locality"?

BBSs were more of the than not local, with some federation in that the operator or someone he trusted would exchange data between the local BBS and some distant BBS.

Similarly IRC used to house a high number of very local channels back when i first came online (and one tried to pick a server on the network that was in one's own nation or a neighboring one to avoid finding oneself on the wrong end of a net split).

Social networks offers much the same via various means (groups on facebook, sub-reddits on reddit, etc).

Honestly IMO, what killed IRC was IM and SMS. This because now the schoolyard cliques could once more ostracize.

Locality, interesting. I'd agree on BBS'. My experience of IRC, thought on efnet was expanding past my local calling area.

IM definitely took the bite out of IRC because it was far better at creating beginners that never made it to IRC, and a lot of IRC users got pulled to IM. ICQ, Yahoo, AIM, MSN created a new type of connection.

IRC always felt to me more like a public forum, whereas IM was private conversation.

The best private conversations start by branching away from a public space. It's that juxtaposition that makes each half all the more special (think noisy club/bar vs outside). I think the biggest failing of IM is that it's easy to end up with a declining circle of people whom you communicate with. Without a public space to replenish ideas from, privacy becomes a curse. IRC allows both.

This is exactly why I loved IRC and continue to use it to this day.

What to you defines a social network?

yep, despite Zuckerberg's attempt to turn a social network(s) into an online stalking tool for your unrequited lover.

Usenet isn't that bad either :)