Which is fine as long as you're happy to be "that guy". If I need to install RandomNewChatApp to talk to a client that's paying me $$$, I'm going to install it. Similarly, if a close friend or relative uses a new service, stubbornly saying "no, that's too awkward for me" is not the kind of person I want to be.

But I would prefer if I could just add them as an account to an app that I already have. And ideally an open-source, usable, attractive app.

I'm curious how many people in the real world actually use IRC. Find 10 people on the streets of New York and statistically zero use IRC and maybe, maybe 1 has even heard of it. Ask those same 10 people if they've heard of WhatsApp and likely 3 or 4 would have heard of it and probably 2 would have it on their device. If they're from outside the US, that number would go up to likely 7 would have it installed. Ask those same 10 people if they've ever heard of Skype and all 10 would say yes and likely 8 of them have used it.

Obviously this isn't scientific, but the point is that most people don't use IRC. I'm a software dev and I don't use IRC and I've never had a real-world non-dev even mention it. But Skype? I'm forced to use that every day. Text messages? With iMessage, it's great, but you also need to have the person's phone number -- or, you're like me and you're moving around a lot and change numbers fairly frequently, but Skype/iMessage/etc stays pretty consistent year after year.

Just my 2 cents. In terms of "always on intrusiveness" isn't SMS always on? Unless you're using a burner phone, you're being tracked, SMS is always logged, there's no illusion of security.

Besides, who the heck buys a phone is Hangouts imbedded in ROM? If you're interested in security, then I'd suggest getting something other than Android.

Sure, SMS is always on, but it doesn't have access to my camera or mic. I have Skype on my desktops (although I haven't used it in over a year) where I can tell when it's running and where it doesn't bind itself to autostart whenever someone breathes. The main problem with apps is what they request access to and, barring modding your phone with XPrivacy (I've done it, but not an option for the average user), there's no way to deny those permissions.

As for IRC, it isn't how many people use it, but who uses it; namely a huge proportion of technical communities and people I want to communicate with.

As for Hangouts, it's in the default OEM ROMs, obviously, but also in the gapps packaged for CyanogenMod unless you remove it before flashing (as I did).

I'm mostly with you, but I actually quite like whatsapp.

Don't need to pay extra to send an image Messages don't get lost in transit and if it did, it'd let you know. It's fast, simple and usable.

I find most everything faddish, but occasionaly things win out because they suck less than what we already have. Of course, those specific problems above might be UK specific.