Lots of technologists believe that everyone should use IRC, or some next-gen IRC-alike, to communicate. Anything you can do with a specialized messaging app you can do with a messaging relay network. But, of course, specialized messaging apps outstrip messaging relay networks by orders of magnitude; IRC itself has usage that is a rounding error of WhatsApp's. Most people do not perceive any value from being part of a federated relay network; the audiences are not, in fact, the same.