If people are likely to go with IRC in the future, they're not going to know that they're on IRC. It's going to be some webbed up interface. I've met countless people who think "nerd" or "geek" when hearing the word IRC because it's all text and no pictures, so the only way to actually get them on it is with a pretty interface.
Personally, I see Jabber having real growth within the next 2 years due to GTalk, Facebook Chat and MyspaceIM. And as with IRC having a pretty interface, a multitude of people using these means of communication have no idea they're actually on a Jabber server.
That's exactly what we were thinking when we added 'chat' to PMOG. It's a well developed standard and, given a suitable simple interface, most people won't even know theyre on an IRC server. Plus, it's realtime, lightweight, hackable, etc, etc.
Personally, I see Jabber having real growth within the next 2 years due to GTalk, Facebook Chat and MyspaceIM. And as with IRC having a pretty interface, a multitude of people using these means of communication have no idea they're actually on a Jabber server.
Go figure.