4 ms·

Circa 2000 or so, when AIM, MSN, Yahoo! and ICQ were all flourishing, Yahoo had already added offline messages. ICQ, I think also had them, though it was probab

by xp84 2y ago

Circa 2000 or so, when AIM, MSN, Yahoo! and ICQ were all flourishing, Yahoo had already added offline messages. ICQ, I think also had them, though it was probably configurable, I recall the client having a half dozen screens of options. At that moment, neither MSN nor AIM had it yet. AIM eventually did add it, though I don't recall if it was added to AIM after ICQ de-merged from the AIM backend.

sumtechguy 2y ago
Then something like trillian to glue them all together.
- lxgr 2y ago
  There was also Meebo, which allowed you to login to all of them via a web interface (which I believe none of the messengers had natively) without installing the respective clients!
  - toast0 2y ago
    AOL had 'AOL Quick Buddy', a Java applet client and later AIM Express that used Adobe Flash. I definitely used quick buddy from computers at my junior college (98-2000), but I don't remember using AIM express.
    - lxgr 2y ago
      Ah, I never used AIM directly. Maybe that would have worked with ICQ too, though? In any case, Meebo worked using the (back then) advanced, exciting magic of AJAX :)
      - toast0 2y ago
        I think it did at some point, but I think it was quite a few years after ICQ was purchased before the infrastructure merged.
      - sumtechguy 2y ago
        I used the icq web interface for a few years. It was 'ok' it was missing a lot of features but worked in a pinch.
  - xp84 2y ago
    Meebo was sick. I remember they never made any money though as an IM webapp, and eventually fully pivoted to some kind of on-page ad toolbar that site owners would add to their sites...for some reason.
- kergonath 2y ago
  Adium! It really was a gem of an app. Much better than any other I’d used at the time (or that I have used since, actually).
  - realfeel78 2y ago
    Miranda was better.
  - xp84 2y ago
    Indeed. It was so nice to have a native app for work chat, since we could add Google Talk (XMPP) to Adium. A pox on Slack.

by xp84 2y ago

sumtechguy 2y ago

Then something like trillian to glue them all together.

lxgr 2y ago
There was also Meebo, which allowed you to login to all of them via a web interface (which I believe none of the messengers had natively) without installing the respective clients!
- toast0 2y ago
  AOL had 'AOL Quick Buddy', a Java applet client and later AIM Express that used Adobe Flash. I definitely used quick buddy from computers at my junior college (98-2000), but I don't remember using AIM express.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    Ah, I never used AIM directly. Maybe that would have worked with ICQ too, though? In any case, Meebo worked using the (back then) advanced, exciting magic of AJAX :)
    - toast0 2y ago
      I think it did at some point, but I think it was quite a few years after ICQ was purchased before the infrastructure merged.
    - sumtechguy 2y ago
      I used the icq web interface for a few years. It was 'ok' it was missing a lot of features but worked in a pinch.
- xp84 2y ago
  Meebo was sick. I remember they never made any money though as an IM webapp, and eventually fully pivoted to some kind of on-page ad toolbar that site owners would add to their sites...for some reason.
kergonath 2y ago
Adium! It really was a gem of an app. Much better than any other I’d used at the time (or that I have used since, actually).
- realfeel78 2y ago
  Miranda was better.
- xp84 2y ago
  Indeed. It was so nice to have a native app for work chat, since we could add Google Talk (XMPP) to Adium. A pox on Slack.