I find myself reminded of a personal experience from the "early" days of the net.

Back then it was dialup that was the thing, and IRC was the main communications system. This resulted in local and regional channels popping up on various networks.

But then came IM, in particular with MS bundling MSN Messenger with Windows.

Over a year or so i watched the IRC channel dwindle as people moved to using IM.

And some kind of spark was lost in that process.