Fewona Net

IRC was created in 1988. Most significant events when IRC was used as primary media was to report on the 1991 Soviet coup d'etat attempt throughout a media blackout. IRC was previously used in a similar fashion during the Gulf War. Logs of these and other events are kept in the ibiblio archive and also are available for download here.
Download archive IRC logs of major events (1990-1995): click here

IRC was most popular in years 1999-2006 but is still widely used due to its unique design. Its simplicity, lightweight server and client software, and most importantly, unlike other more popular services - open-protocol implementation, make it one of the best way of Internet communication even in the era of 'modern' Internet communications and protocols.

The userbase of the largest IRC Network - Freenode IRC Network - is growing every day. Freenode is special-purpose network that supports project coordination and technical support for open-source software.

As of January 2013, the top 100 IRC networks served more than half a million users at a time, with hundreds of thousands of channels operating on a total of roughly 1,500 servers out of roughly 3,500 servers worldwide.

More detailed history can be found here and here. Interesting blog post about IRC nowadays written by Pingdom.com read here.
Yes IRC is *NOT* dead and will not die. In fact it will get better with IRCv3

FEWONA IRC Network has a long history of almost 10 years - the main server have been founded back in 2003. We are constantly trying to improve the network and our user base has been increasing in the past year. We are working hard to keep it going up in the future too. :)

Since early 2013, part of the Fewona team started Hosting Services Project (VPSBG.eu), which quickly expanded. You can find the plans of the VPS Hosting offered on their website.