Interesting... I don't spend any time in IRC Channels. I find them distracting. But it's cool that some people have gotten a job or two out of a Channel.
They're still a mainstay of open source projects. I remember when I first logged back into one circa 2000 and thought "Wait, people still use IRC?" Eight years later I'm still using Freenode; #startups is a nice extension of the news.YC community.
