I was on IRC for a while this week and from my observation people have 1 problem, they enter say "hello/hi" w8 like 3 minutes and than "omg, nobody answering me i`m off".

Maybe a problem of accidental tab close and they don`t bother to get in again but I also saw that someone requested a program for IRC chating, so I would advice totally free X-Chat or just Pidgin which is IM with IRC support.