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ICQ will stop working from June 26
- vi2837 2y agoHm, I dont' remember it now, it was over 20 years old :).
- Apocryphon 2y agoIRC will never die
- jsheard 2y agoBeing self-hostable it can never die completely but lets face it, in most communities it's a hollowed out husk of what it used to be since Discord took off.
- maxbond 2y agoMy reading (and maybe I'm wrong because the comment was terse) is that IRC will never die, because it is not a commercial interest that can be shuttered. It's an open protocol and anyone can spin up a server. Any community you build inside a walled garden can be taken from you. I do think that is important to keep in mind.
- ta1243 2y agoIt can't die because of that, but the reason we use things like reddit and discord and slack is because those are not open protocols -- they have monied interests behind getting people to use them The idealism of the internet in the 80s and 90s never could survive past the growth phase.
- z0r 2y agoI don't use reddit, discord and slack because they are not open protocols. I use them because of the network effect and only reluctantly. Look at the relatively recent success of software like bittorrent and know that idealism and commercialism both live and die by the network effect. We aren't doomed to live in walled gardens forever.
- maxbond 2y agoI think you can credit a win to IRC recently, too, when someone tried to buy control of Freenode and it seems (as least as an onlooker) that everyone successfully coordinated upping stakes and moving to a new network. I don't use IRC, but I find that impressive.
- maxbond 2y agoI think everything you said was true, but I would point out that I think of this as a practical rather than ideological position. I'm not saying it never makes sense to build inside of a walled garden, I'm saying there is a costly tradeoff. I would speculate that it might be more important going forward, but time will tell.
- mog_dev 2y agoMatrix too
- rocky1138 2y agoDOS Game Club on AfterNET is still really active, for those who have an interest in checking it out.
- vundercind 2y agoAnd yet, it’ll still be around after Discord shuts down.
- jsheard 2y agoBut would IRC be what a post-Discord exodus actually goes back to? Lacking basic modern amenities like seamless scrollback and push notifications is going to be a hard sell for the generation that grew up with Discord. As a sibling mentioned, Matrix is closer to the mark.
- jan_Sate 2y agoDoesn't matter. IRC serves a niche that there's always a community for that no matter how small it'd become. I'd place a bet that it won't die as long as there's computer and internet. Long live IRC.
- toastal 2y agov3 has a lot of features folks don’t talk about. But XMPP MUCs are still kicking too.
- timeon 2y agoThere is also Zulip, that I think is opensource.
- Bluestein 2y agoCan vouch for Zulip. Threaded messaging is the best.-
- donio 2y ago> seamless scrollback and push notifications Both are doable with modern servers and clients thanks to v3 chathistory. Ergo (server) and Goguma (mobile client) in particular make this work very nicely.
- unethical_ban 2y agoDiscord's main "ease of use" features: Centralized user management, centralized server discovery, server hosting What it does technically could be replicated by current technologies. Emojis, video streaming, screen streaming. Discoverability by the masses is a tough problem to solve because there is really no way to monetize it. Does Discord just rely on Nitro subscriptions?
- nerdponx 2y ago> Discoverability by the masses is a tough problem to solve because there is really no way to monetize it. Does Discord just rely on Nitro subscriptions? It's a gold mine of data for things like market research, ad targeting/fingerprinting, and more recently AI training.
- dividedbyzero 2y agoYes, but in the same way that WordStar still has some loyal users.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dewey 2y agoA few weeks ago I shut down my self hosted znc bouncer that I still logged in every few weeks to download logs, see if I got pinged somewhere and catch up with some low traffic channels. I then switched over to https://www.irccloud.com https://www.irccloud.com and it's such a improvement as I can use it on my phone, now I'm pretty active again and I kinda missed it.
- huxflux 2y agoAre there any self-hosted alternatives?
- dewey 2y agoFor IRC bouncers there's many, but I'm not aware of anything that has a web interface, phone app, push notifications and all kept in sync. The market is pretty small. Alternatively there's many bridges these days so you can use Matrix with one of the many apps supported.
- progval 2y ago> I'm not aware of anything that has a web interface, phone app, push notifications and all kept in sync. IRCCloud does. Or if you want an open source stack: Soju as bouncer, Gamja as web interface, and Goguma as Android app. If you have a paid Sourcehut account you get Soju+Gamja hosted for you at https://chat.sr.ht/ https://chat.sr.ht/ . I'm not sure The Lounge and Quassel support push notifications, but they otherwise fit your requirements.
- kstrauser 2y agoI didn't realize it still did. Wow, such memories.
- shironandonon_ 2y ago[flagged]
- vardump 2y agoEnough/yes please/anywhere! Ok, that's gringy. :-)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Legion 2y agoGoodbye from 6605455.
- kstrauser 2y agoSee ya. - 1939647
- danyadanch 2y agogg. 466368349
- patcon 2y agoFarewell, ICQ. Sincerely, 1339782
- qiller 2y agoSee ya from 54198743. Weird how I remember this one better than any of my phone numbers
- robin_reala 2y agoI probably won’t install the suggested replacement of VK Messenger, I have to say. No more 71966195.
- epolanski 2y ago251437659, still remember my number even though I haven't been using ICQ for more than two decades.
- ta1243 2y agoFunny how we remember some numbers our entire lives, despite never using them. I can still rattle off my ICQ number, last used nearly 25 years ago, my compuserve ID which I left in 1998, my phone number as a kid, last used about 1994. I also remember various license plates my family had in the mid 90s, but I struggle to remember my own license plate number now. The only two phone numbers I know are mine and my wife's. I can still remember my high school's phone number though - for some really odd reason as I can't have phoned it much.
- vidarh 2y agoWhen I was 7, my dad wrote a "game" in BASIC on the Commodore 64, and one section required a "secret" (you could see it if you listed the program...) code to gain access. The code was 32744. I have not used that game for more than 40 years, but it'll probably be one of the last things I remember... > I can still remember my high school's phone number though - for some really odd reason as I can't have phoned it much. Any chance it was a number your parents made you learn, or on a phone list next to / on the phone?
- epolanski 2y agoI think that the reason why I remember it vividly is because I used it for logging in for years.
- inopinatus 2y agoThe most important numbers you can commit to memory are your emergency contact's phone number, your wedding anniversary, and 2ⁿ ∀n ∈ ℤ [1, 24].
- SeanAnderson 2y agouh oh :( I haven't used ICQ in years, but my heart is still sad to receive this news.
- didip 2y agoBummer. End of an era for sure. But it's dying even back then 20 years ago.
- bhouston 2y agoI was an ICQ user but I haven't logged in since the early 2000s I would guess? I have a faint recollection of maybe using Trillium during its heyday with ICQ maybe in the 2003-2004 time period?
- anta40 2y agoReally? My impression was 2 decades ago it was pretty popular, at least lots of my high school mates used it. I never, and eventually picked YM instead few years later.
- RegnisGnaw 2y agoGoodbye from 201253
- focusedone 2y agoWoah, that's a low number.
- to-boss 2y agothere was a big market for short numbers back in the day. i remember buying a 6-digit icq number for a 10€ paysafecard when i was like 14 in a "hacker" forum lol
- WA 2y agoThe hack was to scan ICQ numbers for their associated email addresses, filter by big providers like Hotmail and Yahoo and try to sign up for the same address. Some were abandoned and you could use the username again. Then password-reset in ICQ and voila, there’s your 6-digit ICQ number. But yeah, I bought a 6 digit number on eBay for 5-10 bucks too ;)
- RegnisGnaw 2y agoI feel old now..
- StrictDabbler 2y agoAppreciate it. Sincerely, 156876
- midnitewarrior 2y agouh oh!
- wildylion 2y agoI really like it how they were still using exactly this uh-oh sound at least in some McDonald's restaurants in my area :)
- bhouston 2y agoGoodbye from 9,275,290
- SSLy 2y agoGadu Gadu, the contemporary clone from Poland, is still up. I don't know if anyone uses it.
- pndy 2y agoAll my friends left it years ago and moved to either whatsapp or fb messenger, some opted for telegram. From what people wrote in appstore it seems that GG become some kind of social network filled with spam and scam profiles. I tried to log in by site right now and my password isn't recognized anymore; and it also seems to be loading something from tiktok there
- Nux 2y agoOh wow, didn't think it was still around! Don't remember my id number any more, but had great fun using centericq over SSH. Simpler, better times. So long and thanks for all the fish!
- xeckr 2y agoI don't even remember what my ICQ number was. It was the first social network I joined.
- vaylian 2y agowhy should ICQ be a social network?
- halfdan 2y agoIn the purest sense of those two words it was a social way to interact with a network of people?
- vaylian 2y agoThat's very fuzzy. What about e-mail? Or the phone network? Or the internet in general? Yes, there can be some social aspects to it. But that by itself does not make it into a social network. Networks have topologies and paths. The social graph matters on facebook because you get connected to your friend's friends which is a core feature of the platform. This is not the case with chat platforms.
- mattl 2y agoWhat makes you think it wasn't a social network?
- vaylian 2y agoIt is only a chat platform and it predates the first social networks (which were explicitly called "social networks" back then). This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, but I think people use the term "social network" way to much so that it doesn't even mean anything any more.
- mattl 2y agoI don't know what the official ICQ client does today but back in the day it had more than just chats between people. It had file sharing, etc.
- arp242 2y agouh oh!
- tivert 2y ago> ICQ will stop working from June 26 > You can chat with friends in VK Messenger, and with colleagues in VK WorkSpace Was ICQ like Livejournal, where it had a lot more popularity and staying power in Russia than in the West?
- ilikehurdles 2y agoKind of like WhatsApp vs iMessage, ICQ was more international than alternatives like AIM or MSN
- Scoundreller 2y agoAnd dunno about AIM, but MSN took a looooong time to implement things like offline messaging. ICQ didn’t (ever?) need the double coincidence of being online. Even iMessage and its fallback SMS today are bad for this. Fun MSN story: I read you could put curse words in your name subtitle if you used 0x ascii hex codes for one of the characters. So I pulled up the list of ascii codes and hoped that “beep” would work, but it did not make anyone beep. Then I tried null, and it made all my contacts go offline, and offline again as soon as they logged back in. Again and again. Except myself (can’t remember if that was because I used a 3rd party client aMSN) Hehe. Had people apologize to me for suddenly dropping mid convo.
- 5e92cb50239222b 2y agoNot from Russia, but pretty close in all senses of the word. It was heavily used in my circles up to about 2010-2011, then started losing market share to other messengers (one¹ of the popular messengers was from the same company that now owns ICQ), and then Telegram came and buried it completely in no time at all. 1: https://agent.mail.ru https://agent.mail.ru
- wildylion 2y agoAbsolutely yes. Damn, these times were something else.
- grishka 2y agoRussian here — we used it until around 2011, which is when VKontakte introduced instant messages and soon after group chats, so everyone switched to that. Here's the announcement: https://vk.com/blog/blog131 https://vk.com/blog/blog131, the title "VKontakte in ICQ mode" is telling. Oh and the contest Pavel announced at the end of that post? I won that with my shoddy MFC app :P
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jedberg 2y agoThis makes me sad. I mean, I haven't logged in in about 20 years now, and couldn't if I wanted to (don't have the password or access to the email address). But I had a low five digit user number, and built a lot of relationships on ICQ (some of which continue today!). It was my main method of electronic communication in college. I had romantic relationships live and die on ICQ. Another reminder of how things change over time.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- weinzierl 2y agoSame for me but the day I will really cry a little will be when mIRC dies. It was my introduction to instant effortless free worldwide communication. Of course I haven't used it for decades but it calms me that it is still very alive.
- jan_Sate 2y agoUnlike ICQ, mIRC is just an IRC client and even if it dies, the IRC networks would remain accessible using other IRC clients. That said it'd be a pity if mIRC dies.
- RankingMember 2y agoI'd hope Khaled would open source it if he decides to give it up
- freedomben 2y agoThis is starting to feel even more important now that HexChat is over.[1] Is anyone aware of maintained forks or a revival effort? [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39326630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39326630
- okasaki 2y ago
- rocky1138 2y agoGoodbye from 7478741
- echelon 2y agoThe old internet was such a frontier. While we've undoubtedly gained so much, we did lose something very special.
- marban 2y ago490202 signing off
- Gigablah 2y ago402777 here!
- josefresco 2y agoRIP 2412581 - I don't think I'll ever forget my UIN Proud to be part of this generation of "instant messengers". Long, long before texting, me and my peers were living the future life!
- gnicholas 2y agoInstant messengers were great — better than texting and better than posting on FB/Twitter IMO. I loved away messages, which were ephemeral and not spammed to your network. We're getting a little of that functionality with iOS's DND status, but it's not customizable. My theory is that FB didn't want to enable away messages because then people would just set it once and not log in for a long time. It's a shame that a feature that was common 20 years ago is now only starting to make a comeback.
- ssfrr 2y ago1303789 Serious question - why do so many people remember our ICQ numbers? I don’t remember what user-facing function it served. Was that actually the identifier we shared with people to connect? I suppose it also came at a time for a lot of us where things seemed to wedge into our brains more easily.
- giantrobot 2y agoLikely the same reason I remember my grandparents (now passed) phone number. A handful of digits I saw or referenced a lot.
- jedberg 2y ago> Was that actually the identifier we shared with people to connect? Yes. It was like giving out your telephone number.
- gruturo 2y agoAnd that's also why we remember it. It's from a time we used to remember phone numbers (smartphones weren't around, in many countries even normal cell phones weren't widespread yet, and even those had limited memory and usually no way to migrate to a new phone (the SIM could store entries too but had laughably low capacity, like 25 entries with max 9 letters for the contact name)). So, committing them to memory was just a thing. And our brains get less plastic with age. I can remember my home phone number from 1982, but not my last cell number (before the current one) although I used it for 3 years, as recently as 2014. The insane amount of information streaming in front of our senses probably also triggered some unconscious attitude adjustment (not going to bother remembering any of it, if it's important I'll write it down).
- sarnowski 2y agoIt is from a time when we were used to remember phone numbers, and where we shared our phone numbers to keep in touch (calls, sms). ICQ directly picked on that and it was just another „phone number“. Unfortunately I only remember the first half of mine after so many years. In the age of smartphones, at least my brain degenerated to not be able to recall more than a handful of important phone numbers.
- indianmouse 2y agoGoodbye world! So long! It was a memorable one... Since 20+ year! It'll live on in my memories! Signing off for the one last time! ----------------------- -= 67804916 =- ==End of Transmission== -----------------------
- jeffrom 2y agolol, still remember my icq number by heart: 5479339
- cultavix 2y agoOh no, since like 1998 I had been using this, though not really for the past 10 years heh. Good bye friend!
- vitaut 2y agoWait, ICQ has been working?! BTW I still remember my ICQ number although I haven't used this messenger in many years.
- cynicalsecurity 2y agoFinally. It's been an FSB spying frontend for years anyway.
- mardifoufs 2y agoTo spy on who? Why would the FSB use ICQ? Isn't it basically a completely dead platform?
- zillazills 2y agosee you, space cowboy - 1179666
- e38383 2y agoThat’s the end then. 2455876 signing off ;) I even remember my password.
- mindcrime 2y agoWell... I don't know that they ever officially released a protocol spec, but libpurple implements ICQ so at least enough of the protocol was reverse engineered or understood somehow to allow for OSS clients. So I suppose somebody could start from there and build a compatible server. Of course it might wind up only being compatible with Pidgin and other libpurple based clients, and the market for this is probably approximately 16 people worldwide. But still, it would be kinda fun.
- layla5alive 2y ago1. What has happened to us that 16M people is something we just laugh at as an inconsequential number, wtf. 2. SNR on those 16M people is probably well above average in the vector of most interesting people on the planet.
- bigstrat2003 2y agoNot 16M, 16. Very different.
- stickfigure 2y agoEither the parent edited their post, or you misread it by 6 orders of magnitude.
- danielbln 2y ago16, not 16M.
- mindcrime 2y agoWhat has happened to us that 16M people is something we just laugh at as an inconsequential number, wtf. I literally meant 16 total people. To be fair, that was a bit of hyperbole, but the point is that there probably aren't a lot of people looking to use an "open source ICQ alternative" in 2024. That doesn't mean that somebody shouldn't still do it, but it would probably be a passion project, more than something that would make money. At least that's my guess. :-)
- octernion 2y ago
- Khaine 2y agoNot only is this sad, it makes me feel old. Its just another reminder that the Internet of the late 90s/early 2000s is dead and not coming back. Instead its been replaced with corporate blandness and faux outrage.
- noncoml 2y agoA piece of software that was way ahead of its time. Respect to Mirabilis
- carlos_rpn 2y agoGoodbye from 145993830. How do I even remember this after so many years?
- kristiandupont 2y agoI freaked my girlfriend out once because I had my (desktop, a large tower!) computer connected to my stereo. I had left for some reason and there was no music playing, but ICQ would play a little knocking sound when someone logged in. She had heard it three times from the living room, scanned every door and window to find out who was knocking :-)
- inversetelecine 2y agoFun forgetting your speakers were cranked and getting a message. " Uh oh!" waking up the whole house.
- focusedone 2y agoWow, didn't realize it was still out there! Lots of fun chatting with random people from around the world on there. 15574041
- swozey 2y agoMy number was 163766, funny how I'll never forget it. Also I've only seen a handful of people with lower numbers than me. I remember when there used to be an ebay market for selling your 6 digit numbers. IIRC they started at 100000? And those were all employees. I was in elementary back then. Prior to ICQ my online friends and I used PowWow chat if you remember that. It had the funniest robotic voice chat. edit: Wow PowWow was 1998, I thought it was way earlier than that. http://powwow.jazy.net/ http://powwow.jazy.net/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowWow_(chat_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowWow_(chat_program) https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5bpjm/that-time-john-mcafee-developed-one-of-the-first-social-networks https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5bpjm/that-time-john-mcafee... edit2: Wtf John McAffee made it
- 1327344 2y ago1327344!
- debo_ 2y agoAll I can say is: "Uh oh!" https://youtu.be/RhGHerssyk4 https://youtu.be/RhGHerssyk4
- 29athrowaway 2y agoLOL :-)
- inanutshellus 2y agoI have the ICQ "Uh OH!" sound in rotation as a text message alert sound for work/support contacts. It's pretty jarring, as y'all know, so it doesn't do to have as the default sound, but it it's great for important contacts that don't message much. Honestly it's a bewildering choice for the default "message received" sound of an IM client. It's so very alarming. I can only guess that the makers were expecting you to be a room away from your tower PC (with its deluxe 18" CRT display and mouse cables that required a screwdriver) to make sure you never missed a message. These days, when you're never more than a layer of fabric away from your IM, it's a bit much. But man, effective.
- pndy 2y agoSomehow I'm having Worms Armageddon flashbacks
- mike_hock 2y agoMany moons have passed since the worms went to war. Onwards and upwards! Bigger weapons than before! Boggy B. took cover, he shivered on patrol. The arms race: crazy, simply way out of control.
- jedberg 2y agoMan I gotta say that experience was ruined by the 10 second ad I had to endure ahead of it. I really wish YouTube would just not try to monetize videos that are shorter than the ads.
- noman-land 2y ago
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- atonse 2y ago3383011 – I still remember my ICQ number 20+ years later :)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jandrese 2y agoEven though it was mostly just Russians wanting to practice their English last time I used it a couple of decades ago I will miss this service. 9805028 What I really miss is the era when every chat service was on an open protocol so you could have a single app that supported everybody no matter what service they used.
- 5e92cb50239222b 2y agoAll chat platforms (that I can remember) that were popular around that time used proprietary protocols, including ICQ. Everyone I knew preferred third-party clients to the official one, and these clients would sometimes break because ICQ kept changing tiny details in the protocol to try to force users to use the official client. It never worked, of course, because updates that fixed compatibility would usually come within a couple of hours.
- jandrese 2y agoI guess not open open, but at least they weren't behind cryptographic walls. It is an embarassment that in 2024 you still can't send someone an iMessage from a PC or Android phone. Shoot, messaging from a PC in general is hard. No easy SMS access, and even third party apps often have stupid things like "the app is actually running on your phone but you can forward message to some flaky and bloated electron thing on a PC if you really must."
- joshuaissac 2y ago> mostly just Russians wanting to practice their English I guess that explains their recommendation of VK Messenger as a replacement. 360487731
- 5e92cb50239222b 2y ago> Originally developed by the Israeli company Mirabilis in 1996, the client was bought by AOL in 1998, and then by Mail.Ru Group (now VK) in 2010. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICQ
- mbrameld 2y ago259804 - Now I kind of want to see if I can still log in.
- vicnov 2y agoMany years ago go a girl who liked me gifted a 6 digit icq number. I still remember that. Sigh.
- olliej 2y agoI assumed it was already dead, just on a lark I went to sign in and it appears to require a phone number now, not my old number? so I guess it has not actually been "ICQ" in a while? edit: ah, they're doing the odious "use an sms to allow your account to be compromised login" instead of passwords. Then they say "your account has been compromised" until you add a phone number
- joshuaissac 2y agoYou can bypass the phone number login using the link on the top left, and instead login with your ICQ number and password.
- olliej 2y agoyeah, that was my edit but I realize I didn't actually clarify that just what it was doing. But it then will just claim your account has been compromised until you give them a number :D
- joshuaissac 2y agoYou can bypass that second screen as well (or at least, it let me do so for my account).
- RicoElectrico 2y agoAnd yet Gadu-Gadu, its Polish clone, is chugging along after its userbase has been decimated by Facebook Messenger (WhatsApp did not take over the market as much as in the other EU countries).
- pndy 2y agoIIRC GG is in 5th hands now since Łukasz Fołtyn created it
- sharpshadow 2y agoGood old times playing those games with strangers and exchanging pictures, then after ICQ we used Skype.
- jordemort 2y agoHasn't it not actually been ICQ for a while now? I thought the original service with the numbers (387175) was shut down and replaced with something else entirely at some point.
- brassattax 2y agoI believe you're right on this. The original ICQ number accounts got merged into AOL Instant Messenger, and for a while you could log into AIM with your ICQ number. I think the original ICQ died when AIM got shut down.
- 0xDEADFED5 2y agoi was able to sign in with my number and password just now, had to click link in the upper left to get around the phone number request
- 89vision 2y ago2476319, got it in 1997 or 1998
- badwolf 2y ago677808. RIP old friend.
- johnbellone 2y ago91245402
- dwhitney 2y ago501108 - never forget
- giantrobot 2y agoThis is a thread to ask: are there any good/working tools to process the old databases from ICQ 99/2000 versions? Maybe even the Mac version? I have some old backups I'm sure have ICQ DBs on them and it would be cool to dump the contents.
- derwiki 2y agoDang, props for holding onto that. I’ve only got some low res jpegs from that era. Iirc the .dat file was largely readable if you opened in a text editor; have you tried?
- giantrobot 2y agoIt's definitely possible to read the strings from the dat files with strings (or text editor) but the dat files are a structured database. Two subsequent strings aren't necessarily related to each other, I'd guess they were simply received from the server sequentially. After posting I went hunting myself and found some interesting things to try: An ICQ DB spec from Miranda NG: https://github.com/miranda-ng/miranda-ng/blob/master/plugins/Import/docs/import-ICQ_Db_Specs.txt https://github.com/miranda-ng/miranda-ng/blob/master/plugins... Java exporter tool: https://github.com/patric-r/ICQExport https://github.com/patric-r/ICQExport
- doublerabbit 2y agoBye bye WarSheeps
- mmastrac 2y ago4089460. No idea why that number is stuck in my brain.
- whitehexagon 2y agospooky, only last month I was trying to recover my password, oh for those simpler days on the internet. 36063000
- brightrhino 2y agoMy account was taken over with one of the hacks, I remember shaming the person who took it into giving it back to me. 756331 signing off
- twojobsoneboss 2y agoUh oh!
- phendrenad2 2y agoIt's been dead a long time, it just had a brief afterlife in Russia. Chat apps aren't cheap like the old days, now they require a large moderation staff. Maybe AI will change that?
- Zak 2y agoICQ is/was mainly for one-to-one and small group chats, much like Signal or WhatsApp. I don't think that use case needs a large moderation staff; I consider even having the ability to do most kinds of moderation an anti-feature in that kind of tool since it means the communication is not truly private.
- mmh0000 2y agoOh man. It's the end of an era. I still have my ICQ number for 1998 memorized (62125812). I was a bit late the the internet game, ICQ was the first real platform where I met people who, still to this day, I consider friends.
- urbandw311er 2y agoThis makes me very sad. Used ICQ throughout Uni in 1999 and met a girl via random chat. We messaged each other for about a year then thought I’d fallen in love — travelled halfway around the world to finally meet her. It didn’t work out but what an experience. RIP ICQ.
- pcurve 2y agoI'm sure most people know this already, but ICQ stood for I Seek You.
- racl101 2y agoEnd of an era.
- davidpolberger 2y agoI know this doesn't add much value to the discussion, but I was really proud of my UIN when I was a teenager. And this may be my last chance to flaunt it, so here it is: 1779900 So back in the day, these were known as Universal Internet Numbers, or UINs. You have to admire the sheer audacity of using that name for the user identifiers of a service you're building. I believe they were renamed to "ICQ#" later.
- kinow 2y agoUINs! I didn't remember how we called ICQ numbers! Thank you!
- coolspot 2y agoThat’s a very impressive UIN!
- inversetelecine 2y agoSame, nice repeating digits. 2288665
- jtriangle 2y agoStrictly speaking, sequential numbers can scale infinitely, so not the worst way to handle it.
- passwordle 2y agobro, nice dubs!
- consf 2y ago[dead]
- robertheadley 2y agoEnd of an error. I mean Era.
- wantsanagent 2y agoRIP ICQ. I still have logs of chats from highscool. It was really my first foray into the idea of chat. I remember that I once did a presentation for a linguistics class on the use of emoji and the various shorthands that showed up in chat and people were actually interested because it was so new(1). (1) Yes IRC far predated ICQ but the linguistic norms there differed significantly from ICQ, it was all in my presentation, you had to be there :)
- esafak 2y agoI remember my UIN but not password. Weird how that works!
- conradfr 2y ago22239414 I remember a few years ago when I logged back in after all those years it asked me to change my password ... because the old one was three letters long, definitely from a different era :)
- pocketsand 2y ago2854684 Not an elite 6 number UIN, but at least on the bottom side of 7 digits.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- chisness 2y ago15203830
- yazantapuz 2y agoMany good memories... Goodbye from 99184387
- Valodim 2y agoEyoo I was 99485387 just two digits diff, nice!
- pleo__ 2y ago21863839 Yup... still remember it! Crazy! Sad to see this go.
- iriomote 2y agoWow, after all this time I thought everything was gone. But sure enough, my login for worked and they are all there, all my contacts. Farewell from 252972013
- wellthisisgreat 2y agosee you on the flip side
- kzzzznot 2y agoRIP ICQ Spent a lot of my childhood using it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- kubatyszko 2y agoThe last bastion of the old Internet, end of an era!
- agumonkey 2y agoI wonder how many machine operates it and if there's a GDPR 'backup your data' feature hehe
- devin 2y agoUh oh!
- lastdong 2y agoI think after IRC, there was ICQ and MSN. On ICQ, you had a number. ICQ was great. I have fond memories of the spinning flower.
- grishka 2y agoThey somehow deleted/deactivated my account several years ago. Not that I used it much in the last 15 years :) For those who want to experience ICQ once again, there's http://kicq.ru http://kicq.ru, an unofficial ICQ server that uses some very old version of the protocol so only QIP 2005 and some versions of Jimm work. Adium doesn't work, unfortunately. My number there is 480976.
- doktrin 2y agoI wonder how many others instantly recalled the ICQ notification sound on reading the headline.
- geocrasher 2y agoUh oh!
- asternfern 2y ago116633 Good times!
- yumraj 2y agoOh, I didn’t even know it was still running. I’d used it when it was latched. Don’t even re my number, but I have very fond memories of using it.
- philjackson 2y ago"Uh oh"
- tored 2y agoOfficial ICQ client got bloated for every release. Security issues and lots of spam. Miranda IM, open source plugin based architecture, was the best client for ICQ. There was a fun plugin that notified you if anyone read your away message. Good trolling potential.
- godzillabrennus 2y agoI remember when Pidgin was my defacto chat app because it had all of the platforms and none of the bloat.
- inversetelecine 2y agoand it's brother Adium on OS X.
- pablo1 2y agoI wish they would just open source it, now that it's going to be stopped. Would love to self-host it a bit, just for nostagia
- pmarreck 2y agoI think I still remember my ICQ #: 15868571 EDIT: How would I even log in to take a peek? It won't accept my US phone # and my (old, insecure) passwords that I likely used no longer work (and I can't seem to use that number as the login!)
- teel 2y agoMy finnish phone number did not work either with web login, although I dont think I ever saved it anywhere back then. But succeeded to login with UID and password that I have luckily been keeping in safe (post-its first in the 90s, keepass nowadays)
- pmarreck 2y agoyeah I use firefox's secure password store of late with long passwords generated either automatically or via a dictionary-word password generator I created https://replit.com/@pmarreck/Random-and-dictionary-password-generator https://replit.com/@pmarreck/Random-and-dictionary-password-...
- 0xblinq 2y agoI still remember my uin and password. I still miss that “watooo” sound when you received a message. Good times. Thanks for being part of my first days on the internet. Rest in peace.
- linearrust 2y agoICQ was the primary tool for my friends and I to play games online ( quake, doom, starcraft, etc ). Not only with each other but people all around the world. Every time we joined a server our list of icq friends kept increasing. I still remembering coming home from school and immediately checking icq. The mid 90s to early 2000s was a real special time.
- tacone 2y ago420702 Thank you ICQ!
- hk1337 2y agoI didn't even know it was still working
- hylaride 2y agoI think until recently it was still popular (or used enough) in Russia when Telegram finally took over.
- wkat4242 2y agoICQ still WORKED? Wow. I liked it but the problem was that it didn't have contact list sync, server-based scrollback and other mod cons. And of course that they totally screwed it up with adware.
- sunaookami 2y agoThey repurposed it into a Telegram clone a few years ago, they even had nearly the same bot API and you could import stickers. The desktop client is also a near copycat. It was called "ICQ New"
- EGreg 2y agoNoooo! Not ICQ! I only haven't used it for 20 years! But it was kinda cool, like AIM. Except why was their sound always "oh-OH?" And why was it called "ICQ"? I heard it was short for "i seek u" but that's kinda dumb, ain't it? innit?
- mongol 2y agoICQ had a first mover advantage, and lost it. But why?
- toast0 2y agoBeing first mover isn't an advantage, mostly. Atari is dead. Shoutcast is dead. Compuserve and GEnie are long dead, AOL is dead too. Outside of forums like these, nobody knows who made the first personal computers or smartphones, because it doesn't matter to them. It's a lot easier to build the second insant messaging system than the first because you can see how it works before you build it.
- tombert 2y agoI had no idea that ICQ was still around, but now I'm sad; end of an era. I was more of an AIM guy than ICQ, but I had a tendency to bother creators on Newgrounds, some of which would leave their ICQ numbers, so I would use it occasionally. There are obvious advantages to newer IM/texting clients, but these old ones were a pretty vital part of my teenage years. The main reason I learned how to type properly was so I could communicate with my friends better on AIM. I spent way too much time figuring out how to use alternative IM clients like Trillian and gAIM so I could avoid advertisements, I spent a lot of time customizing my AIM profile and playing with different fonts, and having friends spam mean with "chain messages". I loved seeing creators from NewGrounds sign on at 4am and still be willing to talk to me. I'd be a very different person today without AIM and ICQ, for better or worse.
- leobg 2y agoI remember setting up a TTS system to announce the names of my friends as they came online. “Fledermaus is online”
- moonlion_eth 2y agoI met my first girlfriend on icq
- gargs 2y agoIt was way ahead of its time even in the 90s. I remember being swooned by the real-time typing windows, amazing sound effects, Just Works™ file transfer, and the wonderful contact list with people decorating their names with ASCII art. I made some wonderful friends in real life.
- slater 2y ago10902983 sez bye, too. I lost the account cos this genius right here chose a male first name as the password.
- user3939382 2y agoI signed up for it to complete my config of Trillian, which I thought was totally amazing at the time. Too much sad computing nostalgia :(
- 123sereusername 2y ago[dead]
- fabianholzer 2y agoI hope the last message sent on ICQ will be as poetic as the last message on AIM (according to https://justanman.org/posts/the-last-message-sent-on-aim/ https://justanman.org/posts/the-last-message-sent-on-aim/)
- adamomada 2y agoThis reminded me of a random post I think I saw on here about the same thing happening on Club Penguin, I wonder about the last message on there I had absolutely no connection to the service at all, but the shutdown gave me a weird feeling of loss, perhaps because it was in visual form and the shutdown was recorded on video?
- Zolrath 2y agoCan't remember my driver's license number but will never forget 13658022. RIP
- sixothree 2y agoICQ later.
- szundi 2y agoGood old days
- septune 2y ago54443480
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tristanb 2y agoMy brain doesn't remember much, but i remember my handle; 376930 - from those early days of whining modems and the sheer excitement of talking to people from all over the world. As a kid it opened up my entire world.
- HumblyTossed 2y agoBack in the day, messaging was pretty awesome. You could use an app like Pidgin and pretty much talk to anyone no matter what color their bubbles were. Today, I have to have one app for all the different ways to get ahold of someone. It's pretty annoying, but we did it to ourselves. Yay.
- lproven 2y agoTry Ferdium, RAMbox, or Station. All FOSS. https://ferdium.org/ https://ferdium.org/ https://rambox.app/ https://rambox.app/ https://getstation.com/ https://getstation.com/
- guerrilla 2y agoThese all suck comapred to Pidgen. Pidgen was one UI. This is just a bunch of webapps shoved into the same window/app and it's ugly and awkward as all fuck to use.
- lproven 2y agoYes, agreed. But it's still a lot better than 5, 6, 10 different apps. Also, it's "Pidgin", as in "pidgin English." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin It's a word, not a weird made-up name.
- exadeci 2y agohttps://www.beeper.com/ https://www.beeper.com/ has been my main chat app aggregator, it's not perfect but works for most cases You can also self host it
- nunez 2y agoAgreed. Messaging absolutely blows compared to the glory days of a million interoperable chat clients with no one looking to exploit users for "increased engagement." I miss it all of the time. Beeper's trying to bring it back, but you can see, in real-time, how actively other companies are in trying to lock them out.
- trollerator23 2y agoDamn, icq, the memories.
- Ajay-p 2y agoEnd of an era. When I was a little kid ICQ was my first messaging program. It was the first time I spoke to someone over the computer. Even though I have not used it in a long time it gives me feelings of nostalgia.
- locallost 2y agoOh-oh! I couldn't find how to check for numbers so I just typed in icq.com/xxxxxxxxx and saw my name. Then I thought well no way I will remember my password, but then I remembered I used the same five letter password all the time back then. And voila it works. Who needs a password manager when you are naive, computers are slow and you need to access memories from times when you weren't overloaded with information. I will say I don't have many fond memories of it, it was difficult to use it in the days of dial up. Things also changed quicker than today, I think from 2002-2010 we went from ICQ to yahoo to Skype to msn to others and back. But it was my first <3
- whycome 2y agoFor everyone proudly displaying their old ICQ numbers, just be aware that there are still sites that have some of the info tied to the numbers archived (presumably what was made public/status). So, there may be some easily-access publicly identifiable information that you don't want associated with your current HN username. (I just did a search and I found that my old icq# had a phone number linked to it)
- ssfrr 2y agojust googling didn't come up with anything for me. were there specific sites you found info on?
- kolistivra 2y agoI'm curious too!
- whycome 2y agoICQ.im is one. For some numbers it inexplicably fails out. https://icq.im/1819032 https://icq.im/1819032 Is the format.
- pndy 2y agoICQ counterpart in Poland at some point started using gg: pseudoprotocol and that allowed more aware people to track others activity across the web as most of us included their UINs in post footers on forums
- goykasi 2y ago6447137 I was really surprised when a recovery mechanism was launched many years ago. My account wasnt comprised. It still had the same dumb password from way back -- my first highschool girlfriends name and a number.
- xp84 2y ago"name of some girl i liked at the time" plus a couple numbers if needed for shorter names... That was basically the template we all used at first, in those innocent days.
- gbraad 2y agoLow 6 digits owner. Have long lost access... Made many friends on ICQ. But all good things come to an end. Though this one actually outlasted my expectations: AOL owned... But why does it mention VK?
- flexagoon 2y ago> Though this one actually outlasted my expectations: AOL owned... But why does it mention VK? Because ICQ was bought by VK in 2010
- teuobk 2y agoHaven't touched it in over 20 years, and kind of surprised ICQ was even still around, but so many memories from the '90s. Good night, sweet prince. -- 10923345
- EugeneOZ 2y ago194194984 Terrible, terrible news. So many events in my life are linked to ICQ... Do we have a chance to save it?
- DEADMINCE 2y agoMy first thought upon reading this was just to wonder if my account is still somehow active. I have fond memories of using it, but the end of ICQ doesn't hit me nearly as hard as the end of Geocities did.
- zeamp 2y agoIt has been years since they let me use my ultra short ICQ number from the 1990s. See ya'!
- felixg3 2y ago664427 - RIP
- itomato 2y agoMuscle memory, do your stuff! 43411944
- maremmano 2y ago1824942 not used in years but very good memories!
- culebron21 2y agoOh man, so many memories... Got ICQ in late 1998, and I remember my UIN as well, suprisingly -- unlike the dozen of mobile phone numbers I had over last 20 years. Internet back then connected you to people who you'd not meet in everyday life, and ICQ was a new unusual place to discuss anything with them. It gave you a new view of people you knew. I remember in the last grade at school I had some intimate conversations with a female classmate, which I couldn't imagine doing at school in front of many eyes. It was a dating and meeting app too: rando people would write to other random people. Although these talks were superficial and today I'd see them disenchanting, back then it was an interesting alternatives to offline sociality. A recall from 2003: me and sister having desktop computers, chatting with all the people on neighborhood LAN and sometimes messaging each other over ICQ -- too busy to walk to the next room and speak. Then I used it at office work, mostly to appoint dates with girls from another department. At the time, in 2007, it wasn't exclusive anymore, but like a mark of being web-literate, and girls were easier about telling you a UIN rather than a phone. Then social networks came, and even before mobile integration they were much richer -- all the life went there. Ah, good old days -- make a party, do stupid contests, take photos with a soapbox digital camera, and then pour the entire SD card in the meeting album -- no editing, no removal of closed or red eyed faces, or weird postures or opened mouths. Just let everyone see how fooly they were. And what was different from ICQ was that everybody was aware that everybody was aware. ICQ had no chance, LOL. (edit: And there was Skype too.) The last time I opened it under Pidgin on Ubuntu in 2010-2011.
- lowbloodsugar 2y ago"You cannot recover the password" :-(
- standardUser 2y agoReminds me of a simpler time when messaging was universal, not a Machiavellian marketing scheme to generate social friction in order to sell more phones.
- ASalazarMX 2y agoEven when IM started to break because it was too awesome not to try to monopolize, Trillian (back in 2000!) showed how interoperability was superconvenient to rein in the nascent feudalism and give power back to the users... until the bigger players put a stop to that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(software)
- Nextgrid 2y ago> until the bigger players put a stop to that The problem is that the legal system is misused to prevent adversarial interoperability. Adversarial interoperability was never explicitly welcomed by gatekeepers, but back then nobody would think of suing over it, nor prosecuting such a case. Nowadays, copyright law is used as a reason to shut those things down, even when the copyrighted content is actually third-party user-generated content or content you do have a license to access since it's freely accessible using the official client.
- Nextgrid 2y agoBack when computing was a tool to make users' life better, not a way to profit off wasting their time by "engaging" them.
- adamomada 2y agoAre you joking? The only universal messaging was, and still is, email (edit and SMS, I guess) IRC ICQ AIM MSN Messenger Y! Messenger Etc You not only needed to know the ID but also the service to send it on, which is exactly the same situation today. Except for email
- icehawk 2y agoThat's very rose colored. It was only universal if you installed a third-party client and set up each one separately, or installed a half dozen applications.
- andycowley 2y ago94280666
- localfirst 2y agoso its owned by VK now ? how did that happen
- flexagoon 2y agoThey bought it back in 2010
- Kye 2y agoI actually did a homemade uh-oh for one of my things as an homage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PsNkVAjoGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PsNkVAjoGQ Sad to see it go even if I haven't used it since a 5 digit handle meant something.
- karlward 2y agoGood old 20854206. Can’t believe I managed to log back in just now. Nothing there though.
- hitekker 2y agoI never used ICQ but I have listened to this song on repeat since 2007 https://youtu.be/xVdMiHmnf_I?si=5rwC12kLsNZ0u7ON&t=74 https://youtu.be/xVdMiHmnf_I?si=5rwC12kLsNZ0u7ON&t=74
- bananamerica 2y agoSeems to be offline.
- tylervigen 2y agoAll these wonderful stories... mine is much sillier. I didn't have any friends on ICQ - they were all on AIM or MSN. But I was very active on ProBoards (a non-phpBB forum service) and ICQ was the only social icon that I was missing from my mini-profile, so I signed up so I would have something to put there. Given how vain and overly-focused I was on appearances in that context, I cannot imagine how bad my mental health would have been if social media was available for me.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ranza 2y ago86886958 add me
- nikeee 2y agoThe good thing with the time of ICQ was that it was common that 3rd party messengers implemented the protocol. I used QiP and Pidgin. With Pidgin, it was possible to have all chat history across different chat networks (MSN, ICQ, IRC, Jabber) and accounts in once central place. I still have the chat history to this day. Today, the only multi-protocol clients you get is "Slack/Discord/Teams/etc as tabs inside electron". Every app is isolated and keeps their history. Thank you for your service -- 286841327
- tunnuz 2y agoI can still remember my ICQ number by heart, but have no access to it.
- oniony 2y agoMan, loved ICQ. I used to text chat to the early hours with this Greek girl I met online. It was platonic but we got quite close and exchange physical letters and actually met up a couple of times. Good times.
- richarme 2y agoGood memories from a more innocent time. The ICQ client truncated long filenames in the UI, so you could send "image.jpg (50 spaces) .exe" which would open an embedded picture and install a back-door while just seeming like regular picture. I do miss casually texting with people on the computer rather than the phone, and I don't think it's only due to nostalgia or having more leisure time back then: - If someone was online, it would typically be a good time for a casual, interactive chat. Texting someone on the phone is (at least for me) rarely "live", because it usually happens at an inconvenient time for one of the parties. - Much faster to type, and easier to copy-paste stuff from other places. Can communicate almost as effortlessly as a spoken conversation. - Easier to multi-task in case of a slow reply. I don't enjoy texting on the phone. Millennial logging out for the last time. AFK BRB.
- sedatk 2y agoICQ even had a realtime chat feature that showed keystrokes as they were typed.
- ihaveajob 2y agoThat was my favorite feature. And the random match part, way earlier than ChatRoulette. I remember talking to some kid in the Philippines about the history of her country and mine (Spain). Mind-blowing at the time.
- sorenjan 2y agoI only use the phone to send messages when I'm not at home, otherwise I use the computer. One of the best things about Telegram is their good desktop client, they even have online indicators like ICQ. This was true for ICQ as well, in a way. I used some java app on my Sony Ericsson phone back in the day to read and send ICQ messages, but of course back then you had to connect to the internet explicitly, phones weren't always online so it was of limited use but still cool.
- dev1ycan 2y agoyou can even change the message sound, I changed it to msn
- nu11ptr 2y agoAm I the only one who was shocked to see this still exists? Honestly I thought it was shutdown a long time ago. It does bring back very fond memories, however.
- memming 2y agoI even remembered my password as well. I found a few really old friends that I have lost touch for decades still online.
- booleanbetrayal 2y ago243121 Don't ask me how I remember this number that I haven't used in 20-odd years, but maybe that alludes to the impact it made on the community at large. RIP ICQ
- joering2 2y agoless than quarter mil number, that's very very early on! mine is over 3.8 million, and I created it relatively early on considering I was living in Europe :) I think I remember my number because back then when you had to reinstall software or put it on new machine you always went by your number, instead of your email or username. That's why I think I still remember it :)
- booleanbetrayal 2y agoThat's a good point! Funny how some things get permanently lodged in some brain folds.
- system2 2y ago555655 :) I wish internet didn't evolve. mIRC and ICQ were magical.
- rkaregaran 2y agohit me up, 3080031
- teel 2y ago2558361. Uh-oh. It feels weird how my ICQ UID has stuck to my head although so well. Just tested the online version and it was funny to see the contact names. Too bad the messages were not there. I think I have the db from old old pc somewhere, perhaps it is time to try installing it one more time.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nirv 2y ago#275727 Dozens of megabytes of text, jokes, arguments, dramas, casual and professional socialising, and hundreds of new acquaintances that have shaped my interests in life. Thanks for an interesting 2000s.
- BlackLotus89 2y ago293691201 - am logged in over pidgin right now^^ still works although nobody of my 187 contacts is online. Miss the times
- 51Cards 2y ago2174769 I still have my UIN memorized what... 25 years later? Sad to see it go even though I left the platform ages ago.
- alluro2 2y agoRIP ICQ. Many fond memories. I never looked into the protocols in the background, but it was for most of the time very solid and reliable in delivering offline messages, with correct timestamps and all the stuff you would expect as normal. But Skype was gaining popularity very quickly, and a lot of communication at work got switched from direct person-to-person ICQ or Yahoo Messenger messages, to Skype group chats and calls. Which was really frustrating given how messages were barely functional on Skype basically forever. It would regularly happen that I was offline for e.g. 30 min, someone would send me a message during that time, I would come back online, and then randomly receive that message 2 days later. In any case - a really solid product, service and one of the big formative parts of my youth and early internet days. Thanks to all the people that made it happen.
- m_eiman 2y agoI remember coding im_kit on BeOS and chatting along over ICQ, AIM and others. Happy days!
- miscellanemone 2y agoBeOS 5 Pro and Gobe Productive! I still have those CDs somewhere.
- flerchin 2y agoSometime in 1997 ICQ banned underage users due to some legal issue they perceived. I changed my age on my account to see what would happen, and got banned, no way to recover. I miss the little sounds it made, "hoot Hoot"
- roboben 2y agoAn era ends. Still remembering my number. 9 digits!
- Vaslo 2y agoUltima Online plus ICQ, those were the days
- m3kw9 2y agoA oh!
- richardw 2y agoWow. People have been keeping the lights on all this time? Incredible dedication. Wishing them many thanks for the amazing years, when the internet felt purely good and we had our lives ahead of us. It meant so much to see the “online” indicator of your love, lit up. Go well.
- tunnuz 2y agoCan any of you billionaires save this?
- designium 2y agoWow, one of the last vestiges of the original WWW going away.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bradfitz 2y ago489151 here. I even got a job offer from ICQ back in the day. One of the perks they offered was a small ICQ number ending in zeros. I didn't take the job offer because I was in high school, though, and wasn't even looking for a job. It's unclear whether they knew that. I'd written some companion program and put it on the internet and they'd found it and were impressed. :)
- nogridbag 2y agoHah, cool. I had a similar experience with Xoom.com (the website hosting company). They sent me a job application because I had been volunteering in their forums for a while, assisting people with developing websites. I still remember going into my parents room to tell them I'm applying for a job and they had no idea what I was talking about. I submitted the application, and the Xoom staff had a good chuckle as they had no idea I was ~14 at the time.
- derwiki 2y agoI switched to Xoom from Geocities because I could upload files via WS_FTP. For my fantasy wrestling web site haha!
- mathrawka 2y agoMirabilis contacted you? I worked on some ICQ software in high school, and was the maintainer of large user base ICQ clone. I still own the domain: licq.org Never got a single job offer, guess they saw my code and went running away ;)
- stephane-klein 2y ago52276034 here :)
- techas 2y agoBack in the nineties… I set the country of my ICQ account randomly. It was Vanuatu. One day someone contacts me and ask “are you from Vanuatu?”, so I checked and she was from Vanuatu! So I tell her the truth: “I’m not. Are you?” And she answers “No, I’m from Venezuela, I missed my country by one in the config... Later I searched for people on Vanuatu and we two are the only ones“ :)
- pryelluw 2y agoI met my wife on ICQ back in 1998. End of an era. Thank you for the life changing software.
- kemiller 2y agoWhoa it was still going??
- avodonosov 2y agoI sill clearly remember my 9 digit ID, despite haven’t logged in for years. I used icq a lot for personal and work communication
- jayess 2y ago8335393
- thomashabets2 2y ago263334 Such a good number. This account is where I learned the lesson "don't use a password from the dictionary". :-( It was sad to see lose to much MUCH inferior chat networks, like MSN messenger. It was back when Microsoft could crush anyone (even the chat system), by just shipping it with Windows.
- vascocosta 2y ago28072048 here. Anyone knows about NINA chat? They're trying to keep MSN, AIM, ICQ and others alive. I wonder if someone else is using it?
- havkom 2y ago#14401370
- banish-m4 2y agoAhh the good old days of multiprotocol Trillian rather than adware.
- kirenida 2y agoAnybody remember Odigo?
- PM_me_your_math 2y ago[dead]
- everdrive 2y agoI seek you. This was the first internet messenger I ever used. I met some people playing quake on one of the few servers I could get below 200 ping on. Netman, and BayardBrightBlade, if you're still out there, thank you for an excellent 8th grade.
- Distilitron 2y agoFinaly! Great news!
- geoffbp 2y agoUh ow
- Romanulus 2y ago[dead]
- kinow 2y agoI was trying a few old passwords, but looks like my account was deleted, probably due to inactivity. I saw someone commenting about accounts being deleted due to inactivity, so first I tried to find a way to search old accounts. Found in a website this link: https://icq.im/$YOUR_ICQ_NUMBER/en https://icq.im/$YOUR_ICQ_NUMBER/en Replace that by your ID. I checked some of the IDs in the comments here, and you can see the user name. But mine just shows [deleted], and the old description I wrote years, and years ago :-) Searching I also ended up on this icq.com web page, that looks right out of Geocities: https://icq.com/cf/ate/externals/ma00b.htm https://icq.com/cf/ate/externals/ma00b.htm No idea what's that tool, and no way I am downloading it. But it's amazing to imagine what would be the "created" and "last modified" stats of the files being served there. Thanks ICQ.
- remyp 2y agoSo long, and thanks for all the fish. -85907003
- Morinee 2y agoIf I've never used ICQ before, can anyone tell me how it differed from other chat apps?
- kalleboo 2y agoIt was essentially the first mass-market instant messaging app
- ByteMe95 2y agouh oh!
- dkga 2y agoI will forever treasure my ICQ memories. The sounds it made. The moving image when it was connecting. Listening in Winamp to one of only a few dozen possible songs that I had carefully downloaded. Being able to randomly connect to people you would filter. Yes, I want to talk to someone more or less my age but in Iceland. Or any other country. But most of all, the feeling of being connected. As a teenager in the autism spectrum, that was one of the best feelings I had at that time. Most people don’t get it when I say this, maybe someone here will, but to me it all started going downhill when people all of a sudden switched to a worse alternative, MSN. I see a direct line from there to the annoying easy-to-accept-while-hard-to-reject-but-always-there-anyway cookie pop-ups. And no, this is isn’t some form of Ostalgie where we long for past days of hardship with tender feelings. ICQ just had a great user experience as far as I am concerned and to this day I prefer it to existing alternatives from WhatsApp to Webex chat (don’t mention Teams please, I’m having a poetic moment). It was rather a feeling that perhaps other Brazilians will share: a longing, saudade, for the simpler (yes) but better and more poetic 90s, when ICQ connected you to a world that watched Brazil win the fourth World Cup, Ayrton Senna was inspiring generations to be healthier and their better selves and Mamonas Assassinas could only make us laugh, not cry… So long, ICQ. You will always be part of why I love the internet. PS: I realize the timing of those events doesn’t necessarily align. But sentimentally they do.
- RajT88 2y agoFirst thought: I had assumed ICQ was long dead. It seemed impossible anything from that era could still be running. IRC is of course, through the grace of an ecosystem, but it is a tiny fraction of what it was. Second thought: how do people randomly connect to talk now? Comments sections mostly? I have long ago stopped seeking new connections of any variety.
- omnibrain 2y ago127545907 But it’s gone. I remember all my old passwords from 2000. But I also remember about 10 years ago changing those everywhere to secure passwords. I even distinctly remember doing this for ICQ despite not using it anymore. But it’s not on my password manager.
- neom 2y ago101211975 Always wished I could get back in, lost my password around 2005. At least now I can stop wishing I suppose. Boy this make me way more sad than I expected. Also funny, the kakao new message sound is pretty close: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osUbo0HsArM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osUbo0HsArM
- ode 2y agouhh-ohh!
- KC1LQM 2y ago1307615 I used to have a 6 digit too, but lost it long ago. ICQ was an important part of my youth. ICQ and AOL Chatrooms were the earliest places where I learned I could find groups to talk with about similar interests. Farewell ICQ, thanks for the good times.
- resuresu 2y ago[dead]
- Bluestein 2y agoObligatory - but fully meant- "but can't (somebody) open source the server and keep it running?" comment.-
- lucasyvas 2y agoThis still exists?? What year is it?! :D
- davidbanham 2y agoIt’s been over 20 years since I used it, but I still remember my ICQ number by heart. It’s burned in there so deep I can recall it more quickly than my kid’s birthday.
- jvm___ 2y agoSo, I found a grey t-shirt at a thrift store in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. It has a professionally embroidered ICQ logo on it. No idea where it came from or how it ended up there. I don't think they had a Canadian office. I've had it since 2015, it's fun to wear out and find your fellow xennials in the wild. Anyone have a theory as to where the shirt came from?
- ninjazee124 2y agoEnd of an era. One of the first IM apps I used in my early days of the internet.
- acka 2y agoFond memories of uni, standing in front of a dorm with dozens of students using ICQ inside. Sounds as if someone had just unloaded a truckload of Teletubbies in the yard, "Uh-Oh"'s coming from every direction in a hilarious cacophony.
- AlchemistCamp 2y agoUh oh!
- dools 2y agoUh oh!
- donio 2y agoIRC buries yet another contender. This one has hung on longer than most.
- cdchn 2y agoI thought ICQ died with AIM, darn.
- cutler 2y agoEnd of an era.
- st3fan 2y agoUHOH!
- senectus1 2y agoOh ho!
- codepoet80 2y agoI'm 467533, managed to remember my password -- haven't used ICQ in >20 years. I'll pop online periodically from now until the shut down. Say hi!
- rkagerer 2y agoHas anyone made a patch or proxy to keep this alive by redirecting the client to their own rogue server? Could entice me to reinstall the software and come back.
- cloudedcordial 2y agoI just logged in with my 20 year old password. I see many contacts that I no longer keep in touch. Uh oh!
- glimshe 2y agoI went on a few dates by randomly messaging people with girl-sounding names in the city I lived in. It took some work, but way less than getting to a night club. I'd always do that before visiting a new city... And sometimes had a date lined up by the time I arrived.
- r0fl 2y agoI will never forget my 5 digit ICQ number and how cool it made me feel in the early 2000s
- goykasi 2y ago5 digits? early 2000s? Does not compute...
- temp20240604 2y agoThey don’t expire
- peteforde 2y ago101919 here. My account got hacked in 1999 and so it's been 25 years since I've been able to login, and yet I remember my UIN the way most people remember their first phone number. My friend at the time, 101449 was in the first 1500 users; I was late to the game and joined later that afternoon. I met three people by randomly searching by criteria who are still friends to this day. Erin from Niagara Falls was the first person I had an online voice conversation with. I went to visit Evgenia from Ukraine in St. Petersberg in 2004. I helped Juliana in Sao Paulo practice her English, and went to visit 13 years later. The thing that was most amazing about the ICQ client was that it implemented a store-and-forward message queue, which was especially important in the dial-up era. That is, someone could send you messages while you were offline, and you'd get them when you logged in. ICQ was also the first to implement Away, Invisible and DND modes. While I'm sure that we edit out all of the rough edges in our rose colored memories, ICQ really was the first IM network that felt like a projection of our selves online. NNTP and IRC had their place, but they were radically different interaction modalities. ICQ got a lot of things right that we now take for granted, in an era where techno-optimism wasn't ironic.
- looneysquash 2y agoUhoh!
- luispauloml 2y agoI remember there was one level of Notpr0n¹ that required looking for an ICQ UIN. I guess new players won't be able to pass it without looking for the answer somewhere else. ¹ http://notpron.com/notpron/ http://notpron.com/notpron/
- rekoros 2y agoTalking to my 24 y-o daughter: - Have you ever heard of ICQ? - No
- runevault 2y agoSince others are posting about ICQ. It was the first way I chatted privately with a lot of people I met via stuff like internet forums or MUDs. Formed connections that lasted for years (though nothing lasts forever). I was told to turn on my TV the morning of 9/11 after getting back from my 8am class (central time) by someone on ICQ. I spoke with a friend who was expelled from college to keep in touch with her (for a time) via ICQ. Thinking back, it is strange how easily I let ICQ go, because it was tied up with a lot of good early internet memories, but I guess that is the way the world works, or more specifically the flow of human emotions across time.
- z3phyr 2y agoICQ was my first interaction with computers proper as a kid. My father had just started as a programmer; and the family just got a computer with a Windows 95. Father sets up ICQ so that we can chat and send new year greetings, when he is away fro business. Good times.
- lencastre 2y agoMe’mries… lalala… mem’ries… My goodness, I still remember my ICQ number, 7 digits in all and my first treasured password. ICQ was neat and the brief interplay with direct to SMS was chef’s kiss. But after the acquisition, it became bloated, messy, and no bueno.
- ngneer 2y agoAnyone know what ever happened to Odigo?
- ergocoder 2y agoICQ has taught me that I wasn't good looking. I was friend with this girl at school. She mentioned she didn't use ICQ anymore. I asked why. She said she got so many messages that she couldn't open ICQ without crashing her computer. It is very similar to hitting product market fit. There is an incredibly pull. The CAC is very low. And etc. That was how I learned what it was like to be really good-looking.
- anonzzzies 2y agoTIL; icq still exists. Good memories.
- edfletcher_t137 2y agoI can't remember what I did yesterday but I will remember my ICQ number until the day I die. RIP to an absolute legend.
- Dalewyn 2y agoAn end of an era. I'm sad.
- jen_h 2y agoWow. Blast from the past. Just tried to log in after 20 years and it worked…but I didn’t get farther than it requiring full name and a phone number and lots of other mobile web badness before noping out. If they still have those account creds and first names, y’all reckon VKontacte has our old messages? :X Oh well, have great memories, pouring one out for ICQ tonight.
- snthpy 2y agoWow, a blast from the past indeed. I used it heavily in 1997 and then switched to other things in the late 90s. Can't believe this still works.
- DaleCurtis 2y agoI still remembered my id from all those years ago, 1569200. I was excited to read others were logging in with their old numbers, so I tried the password I thought I had used, but no luck. Feeling adventurous, I dug through my archives and found my old ICQ database and followed https://sec.sipsik.net/tuts/net/icq.txt https://sec.sipsik.net/tuts/net/icq.txt and used the code at https://web.archive.org/web/20070209002044/https://rejetto.com/wiki/index.php?title=ICQv7_protocol_resources https://web.archive.org/web/20070209002044/https://rejetto.c... to decrypt my password... Sadly it was the one I had tried :( It was a fun trip through nostalgia at least!
- Suppafly 2y agoHoly shit, ICQ is still around? I assumed it died 20 years ago.
- INTPenis 2y agoICQ was probably my first instant messaging. Even before I found IRC. My older brother had a 5 digit number, and I remember knowing mine by heart at some point. I also remember very early putting together like a mental map where different regions were on instant messaging. It became more clear as MSN Messenger was being rolled out that eastern europe stayed on ICQ and AOL while US and western Europe were being migrated over to MSN faster.
- cannibalXxx 2y ago[dead]
- leipie 2y agouh-oh!
- leipie 2y agouh-ow!
- andrewfromx 2y agoeveryone knows ICQ comes from "I seek you" right?
- mofosyne 2y agoThe status change and signaling by ICQ is something I wish other instant messaging did more.
- hereme888 2y agoMy PIN for most of my devices is my ICQ number from decades ago. Sad to hear it's shutting down, but I didn't even know it still existed.
- Krasnol 2y agoFunny how ICQ drained people from IRC back then, but IRC is still there while ICQ will be forgotten.
- christallrainer 2y agoWhen my best friend took his live in 2007, I backed up our whole ICQ chat history. Nearly 350000 messages. From time to time I read parts of our texts and it instantly brings me back to our teenage years. We shared everything via ICQ, it reads like a detailed log of our friendship. Thank you for preserving these memories, ICQ.
- alfiedotwtf 2y agoAs a 5-digit user - uh oh!
- HeavyStorm 2y agoICQ was the best IM to ever exist. It was - at least here - pitifully killed by MSN, a much worse tool that had the advantage to be included in Windows. I still have to find a tool as good as ICQ was. Of course, there were bugs and I would expect more from it today (I'm thinking of the app back in 2004), like video support, but still, no one bested it UX and features.
- lightedman 2y agoThe end of an era, to be sure. 16126427, joined in 1997. So many relationships had across that IM client. Store-and-forward was the clutch feature.
- lol_catz 2y agout-oh!
- axegon_ 2y agoI was never really a fan of ICQ even back in the early days of my teenage years when it was big. I just never saw it's appeal. That said > You can chat with friends in VK Messenger and with colleagues in VK WorkSpace Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell no
- hxii 2y agoFond memories of spending time late into the early morning hours chatting with friends and meeting new people during summer break. Even had a short UIN! Even if something new came along now, it won't recreate the magic that was the internet of yesteryear. At this point, it is us that are too different. The nostalgia only has sentimental value.
- xiaodai 2y agoIt was still working?
- pbj1968 2y agoWhatever the oldest age you could set on ICQ, I did and dialed it back a few days to make it believable. They had a directory you could sort by age and I was in third or fourth place. At 18 I was getting “are you really 102?” messages all the time. 90s girls were surprisingly eager to send nudes as I quickly learned. I miss it.
- damethos 2y agoSo many good memories from those old days. I still remember my ICQ number even though I have not used it for so many years. R.I.P. ICQ!
- darkwater 2y agoI might or might not use part of my UIN as a salt in some passwords...
- ramijames 2y agoUh oh!
- ajma 2y agoI still have my icq number memorized and I think I always will
- xwat 2y agoGoodbye from 281436455, registered in ~2005.
- simonebrunozzi 2y agoGreat example of a terrible way to explain things to people: "VK Messenger" I'd guess most people going to the website would have no idea what VK Messenger is.
- amai 2y agouh-oh!