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I think this was also one of the first applications that could qualify as an instant messaging tool. I remember it coming out well before ICQ and AIM. I hope

• alephnil 14y ago
  > I think this was also one of the first applications that could qualify as an instant messaging tool I would certainly consider IRC to be an instant messagig tool, and that has been around since around 1988, while the orginal PowWow seems to be from 1994, which would make it 6 years late to be first. The most well known networks like ICQ and MSN came some years later, so they were still early.
  • Gormo 14y ago
    I suppose you could consider IRC and IM to have some significant feature overlap, but I'd still regard them as essentially different things. IRC's core feature is larger-scale many-to-many conversations, and IM's core feature is one-to-one conversation, and this in turn leads to significant differences usage patterns, interface conventions, network protocols etc. that even further differentiate them.