Pidgin

Runner-up: X-Chat

For years I've been touting the awesome IRC features Pidgin boasts. It's nice to see Pidgin take first place again as favorite IRC app. As my geek-fu has matured, so has my chatting preference, however, and I skipped right over our second-place IRC client X-Chat. I'm now using IRSSI for my textual communication needs. Although my preferences seldom represent those of the masses, I'll be shaking my IRSSI pom-poms next year for the awesome underdog. Credit where credit is due, however; it's hard to beat the flexibility of Pidgin and the huge feature set of X-Chat. It's clear why they are the Readers' Choice victors.