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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
by 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 agodiscord servers
- esaym 2y agoI hate those so much...
- RulerOf 2y ago"servers" I don't think anybody actually cares, but I resent discord for this terminology.
- rglullis 2y agoI 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 agoLife is hard.
- hxii 2y agoMost of us do, I think. Then again, what would you label them as? A space? A domain?
- bangaroo 2y agothere 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.
- realfeel78 2y agoRelic isn't the word. They've changed/expanded the meaning of the term.
- whamlastxmas 2y agoIf we’re doing pedantry Olympics then the definition of server: “a computer or computer program which manages access to a centralized resource or service in a network” Seems like it could apply to a discord group. The centralized resource being chat data.
- realfeel78 2y agoNow you know how my dad feels about the terms "engineer" and "software architect" being used for software developers.
- anakaine 2y agoThe 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 agoIs 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 agoI’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 agoThe 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 agoThanks, 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 agoWell 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 agoI 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 agoI was under the impression that ICQ turned off when AIM did.,
- lproven 2y agoNope. 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 agoIn one of those random connections, I met my wife through ICQ.
- joshspankit 2y agoWhile it had it’s troubles and closed recently, omegle was a modern way for people to connect randomly.
- UberFly 2y agoThat's for sure.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y agoWhatsapp in non US world
- trilbyglens 2y agoWhatsApp is European much more than it is American. Most Americans are just using SMS like cave people.
- swores 2y agoThe 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 agoAsia 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 agoYour logic is missing a couple steps. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/whatsapp-users-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/whatsapp-...
- aryonoco 2y agoWhatsApp 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 agoThis 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 agoI 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 agoICQ 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 agoRussians, given the VK app plug in the announcement.
- codedokode 2y agoYes, ICQ was bought by Russians in 2010, and it was already dying at that time.
- nullsmack 2y agoI'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]