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I 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 s

• RajT88 2y ago
  First 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.
  • asddubs 2y ago
    discord servers
    • esaym 2y ago
      I hate those so much...
    • RulerOf 2y ago
      "servers" I don't think anybody actually cares, but I resent discord for this terminology.
      • rglullis 2y ago
        I hate it as well, mostly for the fact that people don't understand how Matrix is decentralized. They think "join matrix.org and create a space" as the same as "creating their own server".
        • realfeel78 2y ago
          Life is hard.
      • hxii 2y ago
        Most of us do, I think. Then again, what would you label them as? A space? A domain?
        • RunSet 2y ago
          Yahoo called them "groups".
        • anthk 2y ago
          Room.
        • Fuzzwah 2y ago
          In the API they're referred to as a `guild`
      • bangaroo 2y ago
        there is an entire generation conditioned to call any group chat or instance a “server” and the pedant in me absolutely wants to scream every time I hear it I believe the origin, however, was to help it clearly and directly compete with teamspeak or mumble at the time it launched. You would actually have to invest in some sort of hosted server for your group, so the name made sense as a way to help people visualize how discord worked. It’s definitely a relic at this point though.
  • anakaine 2y ago
    The random.connection thing: post comments on Reddit. I'd suggest discord, too, but its not quite the same as ICQ was in terms.of random connections.
  • mulmen 2y ago
    Is IRC a tiny fraction of what it was? As a percentage of internet traffic sure, but has the population of IRC users actually declined?
    • ewzimm 2y ago
      I’m pretty sure IRC has continued to grow in obscurity, much like Gopher, which, last I checked, was also at an all-time peak and growing steadily but slowly.
      • fweimer 2y ago
        The numbers here https://netsplit.de/networks/top100.php https://netsplit.de/networks/top100.php are much lower than what I remember from twenty years ago, and the Internet Archive seems to support this: https://web.archive.org/web/20060902133725/http://irc.netsplit.de/networks/top100.php https://web.archive.org/web/20060902133725/http://irc.netspl... I don't think IRC is one of those technologies whose usage count in absolute terms is at an all-time high today. It wasn't exactly mainstream in the early 2000s, but it still had lots of users.
        • ewzimm 2y ago
          Thanks, that’s interesting info. I think you might be underestmating this part though: “Here you see the 100 largest and most popular IRC networks that take part in netsplit.de's comparison, but please consider that there are still some big IRC networks that are out of competition"
    • hahajk 2y ago
      Well it's being kept alive in the DoD as "tactical chat" [1]. Although the article is from 2015, watchstanders do still use it today. [1] https://publicintelligence.net/tactical-chat/ https://publicintelligence.net/tactical-chat/
  • I_am_uncreative 2y ago
    I met one of my best friends randomly on Reddit, so there.
  • TimTheTinker 2y ago
    > how do people randomly connect to talk now? Just getting online used to place you in a small enough pool that making connections was easy -- the fact that you were online in the first place gave you something in common. Any single online platform has far too many users (and spammers, bots, trolls, grifters, etc.) to make it a good place to meet friends. Maybe IRC would be a good idea.
  • cdchn 2y ago
    I was under the impression that ICQ turned off when AIM did.,
    • lproven 2y ago
      Nope. AOL sold it off in 2010. https://techcrunch.com/2010/04/28/aol-sells-instant-messaging-service-icq-to-dst-for-187-5-million/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/04/28/aol-sells-instant-messagin...
  • rsiqueira 2y ago
    In one of those random connections, I met my wife through ICQ.
    • _blk 2y ago
      Nice. I just remembered my 8 digit login and password and indeed, my wife also had an account back somewhere in 2005-2008. (I brought here there but didn't meet her there though)
    • consf 2y ago
      [dead]
  • joshspankit 2y ago
    While it had it’s troubles and closed recently, omegle was a modern way for people to connect randomly.
    • UberFly 2y ago
      That's for sure.
  • Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
    Whatsapp in non US world
    • trilbyglens 2y ago
      WhatsApp is European much more than it is American. Most Americans are just using SMS like cave people.
      • swores 2y ago
        The comment you replied to is more accurate, as WhatsApp is huge in multiple continents not just in Europe (just not as big in North America as you both point out). For example it's big in South America (and I think Central America too?)
        • netsharc 2y ago
          Asia too. Australia too. So again it's the Fahrenheit users being different... Edit: I looked it up, maybe not Australia...
          • throwaway2037 2y ago
            "Asia too" Hmm. China? No -- WeChat. Japan? No -- Line. Korea? No -- KaoKao.
            • realfeel78 2y ago
              Your logic is missing a couple steps. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/whatsapp-users-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/whatsapp-...
          • aryonoco 2y ago
            WhatsApp and FB Messenger are equally popular in Australia. I'd pre pandemic FB Messenger was definitely more popular but there's been a gradual but noticible shift to WhatsApp since.
  • netsharc 2y ago
    This new (and to be euthanised) ICQ isn't the one with the numeric username. Out of curiosity I did (re-)register a few years ago, IIRC it used the user's phone number as the username.
    • 47282847 2y ago
      I am still able to log in with my UIN and it has my contact list from several lifetimes ago. Even some online contacts.
  • trustno2 2y ago
    ICQ was bought by... uhh Russians? Israelis? Something like that... and was changed several times what it actually is; when I tried it recently, it was just a WhatsApp clone; they even removed all the old ICQ number accounts.
    • FMecha 2y ago
      Russians, given the VK app plug in the announcement.
      • codedokode 2y ago
        Yes, ICQ was bought by Russians in 2010, and it was already dying at that time.
    • nullsmack 2y ago
      I'm actually kinda bummed to hear that. I logged in sometime in the past few years and was pleasantly surprised to see my number from the 90s still worked. Moot point now if the whole thing is being shut down anyways, I guess.
  • consf 2y ago
    [dead]
• coldtea 2y ago
  >And no, this is isn’t some form of Ostalgie where we long for past days of hardship with tender feelings. The longing for Ostalgie was based on things being easier and basic needs met more easily than in the cut throat "free market" environment that followed
• Bluestein 2y ago
  Totally remember the switch to MSN. You are entirely correct. It was the beginning of the end.- (I seem to recall MSN having some killer feature or another that made people switch. Or just critical Maas, with Windows.)
  • nickcox1 2y ago
    I remember there being doubters like [1]: > If you want to chat with people, you have to go where they are, and ICQ and AOL have the most people by far. Chances are, your friends are using one of those services, not one of the smaller ones like MSN Instant Messenger. With all of Microsoft’s muscle, money, and marketing skill, they are just not going to be able to break into auctions or instant messaging, because the network effects there are so strong. [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/12/strategy-letter-i-ben-and-jerrys-vs-amazon/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/12/strategy-letter-i-...
• charles_f 2y ago
  > The sounds it made To this day, my text notifications ring "hey ho"
  • qubex 2y ago
    I set it up as a specific notification for my best friend with whom I used to chat over ICQ back in the late nineties/early twothousands,
• highwaylights 2y ago
  I could not be more with you on this. ICQ. Geocities (and even some of its clones). I even have fond memories of early yahoo chat such as it was. The open Internet and the quirky services that made it up was a miraculous, wonderful thing back then. It’s heartbreaking to think of what it’s become since. I sometimes wonder if there’s a way back to an Internet that resembles the one we had, but all people seem to care about now are celebrities on InstaTikTokTube. In terms of what you said about ICQ and the sounds (totally agree btw), I used DarkSky for years before it got axed and I miss its rain warning sound horribly.
  • comprambler 2y ago
    Yahoo games man
• bayindirh 2y ago
  ICQ was the chat tool of the democratic internet, or internet of the people if you prefer the term. After companies started dominating the internet, it was never be the same. We thought that any company would play by our rules, but they poisoned us with their research, gamification, single way information flow, and walled gardens. This is why I moved to small web. I miss the old internet dearly.
  • cdchn 2y ago
    I lament the loss of the Old Growth Internet as well, but I feel we can never go home again.
    • CarRamrod 2y ago
      >the Old Growth Internet Nicely coined.
  • xingped 2y ago
    Can you share more on what you mean by moving to the small web?
    • wormius 2y ago
      Google is your friend: https://benhoyt.com/writings/the-small-web-is-beautiful/ https://benhoyt.com/writings/the-small-web-is-beautiful/ https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/ https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/ https://blog.kagi.com/small-web https://blog.kagi.com/small-web Another related term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IndieWeb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IndieWeb see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol) (NOT web, but similar in spirit - an extended "Gopher"-like protocol)
      • hluska 2y ago
        Why not just answer a question without the “Google is your friend” crap? That’s rude and we’re better than that.
• sourcecodeplz 2y ago
  ICQ was nice but everyone moved on to Yahoo Messenger. That was the bomb. Truly unbelievable Yahoo didn't capitalize on that. Everyone used it.
  • ungamedplayer 2y ago
    I don't think everyone did. Maybe it's local to your circle of contacts. From what I remember yahoo barely made a dent here in Australia.
    • aryonoco 2y ago
      It was absolutely based on location. after ICQ, from what I remember AOL Messenger was the dominant force in the US, MSN was very popular in many countries, but across Asia, Middle East, and many Eastern European countries, Yahoo Messenger was the de facto standard. Not dissimilar to the situation we have today with WhatsApp and WeChat and iMessage. Except back then you could use pidgin or trillian as multi protocol clients which solved the issue. Somehow, we have regressed so much in this area in the last 20 years.
      • realfeel78 2y ago
        The reason no one needs a multiprotocol client now is we all have instant, intuitive multiprotocol devices in our pocket at all times. That's what's changed in the last 20 years.
  • Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
    Pretty sure everyone went to msn mainly because you could use any image as emoji. Then the nightmare of one emoji per letter begun
  • prmoustache 2y ago
    It was MSN messenger that came preinstalled with any new pc that slowly killed it, because a lot of people got their first computer in that period and thus only knew the Microsoft one. ICQ users slowly started to have a secondary MSN Messenger account (the days of Trillian) but that was it, once people have 2 messengers apps AND most of their friends are on the new one, they just slowly abandonned the one with less contacts. I personnally didn't even knew there was a Yahoo issued Messenger until this comment.
• rkagerer 2y ago
  to me it all started going downhill when people all of a sudden switched to a worse alternative, MSN I get it, and wholly agree.
• badsectoracula 2y ago
  > when people all of a sudden switched to a worse alternative, MSN MSN wasn't a worse alternative to ICQ, MSN was faster and came with Windows, making it both easier to keep running at the background on the weak hardware of the time (i remember launching ICQ and waiting waiting waiting at the splash screen with the rotating petal colors and then the main UI was a mess of buttons, icons and all sorts of bloat) and it was just easier to get into. ICQ did release ICQ Lite which was lighter but by then that was too late - and even that couldn't combat MSN coming bundled with Windows, meaning that people who didn't have any IM suddenly now had one.
  • hypercube33 2y ago
    At some point I had MSN, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo and irc and pidgn came to save me. There were also cool places to hang out like Yahoo Games or a few of the location based chat apps that were fun to connect to strangers and just chat. Discord is so walled garden it's awful in this respect. I also miss the VRML world builders like CyberTown https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyberTown https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyberTown
    • totetsu 2y ago
      then you could try pidgin to connect them all from one app
    • fullspectrumdev 2y ago
      Pidgin was pretty awesome, though its underlying library was so riddled with vulnerabilities… I greatly enjoyed how with XMPP’s in-band registration you could do things like give each contact a unique XMPP address, only to be used with them. You could have unlimited (well, I never hit a limit) accounts, across a load of servers, proxies per account, unique OTR keys per account, etc. I don’t think the UI has really been surpassed either, tbh. I really wish someone would do a modern rewrite of Pidgin in some memory safe language.
      • rw_grim 2y ago
        Responsibly disclosing security issues is paramount to software security. See https://pidgin.im/about/security/advisories/ https://pidgin.im/about/security/advisories/ for a full break down. That said, the vulnerabilities in "libpurple" were way over hyped by someone who rightfully got kicked out of the security community. Most of those vulnerabilities were in fact in protocol implementations that are plug-ins to libpurple and not libpurple itself. I know it's a technicality, but hearing this blatant lie get repeated for over a decade is exhausting.
• Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
  Wasn't icq the client where to send messages, you had to use alt+i? That alone was the worst possible ux choice for a chat client
  • anonzzzies 2y ago
    Wat?
  • bangaroo 2y ago
    I don’t remember that but I do remember a lot about the way messaging worked on it to be kind of clunky by modern messaging standards. At least early on I don’t think you saw messages you received in context of the conversation? That’s a distinct memory I have.
• Sakos 2y ago
  I have no idea what you're talking about. Everybody in Germany used ICQ. MSN and ICQ were concurrently popular in different regions. Everybody I knew from the US or other English-speaking parts of the world used MSN. There was no mass move from ICQ to MSN that lead to ICQ's demise, they basically both died at the same time when Facebook came out to the general public.
  • jeromegv 2y ago
    That’s what happened in my network in canada. It was ICQ first, then MSN became popular while Hotmail was becoming popular and people moved away from icq to msn. Once the switch happened, Icq disappeared very quickly.
• 1ark 2y ago
  This resonates a lot. When MSN become the norm was a big hit, then Windows Live and many people scattered around, left was Facebook but now only with IRL friends. Most alternatives since ICQ have been worse.
• h0l0cube 2y ago
  > 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. It wasn't so much the platform that set ICQ apart, it was the time in which it was born into. In the late 90s and early 00s, the internet was still an unchartered 'No Man's Land'. Internet access was difficult and scarce, and people approached it with curiosity and savor. Now the internet is taken for granted, and anonymously connecting to strangers so unremarkable, that it is seen as an excess that can be squandered in mindless and fleeting argument and opposition. If there was an inflection point, I'd say it was around the nascent rise of Facebook. Connecting to familiars became the default, and also enough, that connecting to strangers didn't hold as much allure as competing to make your life look more appealing within your peer group.
  • throwaway2037 2y ago
    About your last paragraph: The key to me about Facebook, and eventually, Instagram, the visual is simply more powerful to humans than written words. This is why people started chasing fame with good looks as soon as the Internet "went visual". I had a thought last week: When I was in high school (very early Internet years), older people told me the "popular" people will fade away when you go to university. For most part, in my experience, this was true. I realised last week that visual social media allows "high school popular people" (conventionally attractive, for the most part) to stay that way forever. When you look at most social media influencers, there isn't very much special about them, except them seem like the type of person who was popular in high school. For most normies, that is enough to give them more attention than someone else.
    • h0l0cube 2y ago
      Well I'd say that Instagram was yet another inflection point, where relationships with strangers returned in parasocial many-to-one form, in place of the one-on-one intimacy afforded by ICQ. At the time of ICQ, chat programs were the sole means of discovering and connecting to people, and allowed people to connect to strangers based on location. I made real life friends, who I met in person on ICQ. I suppose this kind of connection might still happening on game servers and Discord servers, but certainly, it isn't the dominant mode. As for Facebook being 'visual': Facebook in it's earlier incarnations was just status updates, and mobile phone cameras were still pretty clunky (or non-existant). Instagram took off because it's filters turned otherwise ugly low-fidelity photos into something appealing.
• facialwipe 2y ago
  Listening in Winamp to one of only a few dozen possible songs that I had carefully downloaded. This reminded me of my Macintosh System 7 days. My CPU was not fast enough to decode MP3s so I convert them to WAVs but my 80MB HDD only had space for about two WAVs at any given time.
• yazantapuz 2y ago
  > It was rather a feeling that perhaps other Brazilians will share: a longing, saudade, for the simpler (yes) but better and more poetic 90s I am from Argentina, and share your same feelings.
• consf 2y ago
  [dead]