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ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit

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Re: ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit

#171

Post by digi_owl »

kalleboo wrote: post #163
stormbrew wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you Canadian by any chance? MSN only ever really seemed to take off in some specific regions, one of which was Canada. After ICQ, almost all my American contacts moved to AIM. Which was honestly pretty awful, since MSNM was much nicer.

Sweden went something like ICQ/IRC -> MSN -> Skype Chat -> WhatsApp. I think AIM was only ever popular in the US ( America On Line after all). The interesting period was when IRC was still popular even among non-techies. The girls in school would sit on the PCs in mIRC.

Only other place i can think of that may have had AOL was UK, and then only because i noticed some AOL ads on satellite tv channels from there.

Re: ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit

#172

Post by wvenable »

chenster wrote: post #170
sofaofthedamned wrote: post #26

Everybody is missing the elephant in the room with ICQ, which is why it was popular: In my mid 20's, i'd come back from the pub drunk, login, search for girls online now near me and send them messages. Was usually somebody drunk at the other end, had a few fleeting relationships from that. Nothing since, including Facebook, has had that same immediacy.

That's how I met my wife!

I also met my wife that way!

Re: ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit

#173

Post by digi_owl »

flukus wrote: post #114
guard-of-terra wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICQ happened to figure something out - girls wrote boys as well, I remember getting messages from strangers as often as initiating those. Anyway, it was more about talking than about romantic relationship. Not many people expected to ever meet their virtual friends. You can definitely ruin that, for example, if you do not randomize well enough and a small subset of user base gets too much attention.

You sure those girls were girls? Remember, this was the internet back when men were men and women were men and children were FBI agents.

Frankly that seems to have never changed.

Re: ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit

#174

Post by mutagen »

BorisMelnik wrote: post #167
justusw wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most versions of Skype use SQLite for local storage, if that is of any help!

whats the best front end program to read those databases, for non-db folks? (windows or linux / CLI or GUI)

There's a reasonably full featured plugin for Firefox called SQLite Manager that lets you open arbitrary SQLite files and browse / edit the contents.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sqlite-manage...

Re: ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit

#176

Post by kzisme »

nom wrote: post #57
kzisme wrote: post #6

I thought ICQ died off long ago - much like MSN Messenger faded away years ago. Does anyone still use it?

ICQ was huge in Germany and I was actively using it until 2011 or so, even to communicate with my supervisor at Uni. One year ago, there were still four people left in my list. Also, a good friend that I haven't talked to in 10 years used it to reconnect with me just last year. I wouldn't have her in my life today if ICQ shut down. It has died down almost completely by now though, thanks to whatsapp, skype and hangou…

I used to exclusively use Skype for talking to friends, but most stopped using it ~2 years ago.

I don't have a need for Whatsapp - although I hear it's super popular outside of the US.

Now I mainly use Google Hangouts, but I always feel like it's lacking and isn't as nice as Skype or other alternatives (for both messaging and video).

Re: ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit

#177

Post by jlgaddis »

scott_s wrote: post #51

smacks forehead I seek you. I don't think I ever got that. And it was my primary messaging platform for a long time - I grudgingly made the move to AIM sometime around 2002. I felt that ICQ allowed more in-depth conversations; IM was much more call-and-response.

There were a few applications that had names along those lines during that "era": ICQ, CUSeeMe (video chat), and so on.

Re: ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit

#179

Post by bigger_cheese »

ryanplant-au wrote: post #168
stormbrew wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you Canadian by any chance? MSN only ever really seemed to take off in some specific regions, one of which was Canada. After ICQ, almost all my American contacts moved to AIM. Which was honestly pretty awful, since MSNM was much nicer.

I think MSN was much more popular globally, while AIM dominated in America for obvious reasons. In Australia, I only ever met people using ICQ or MSN, the only time you used AIM was to speak to an American.

Australian here as well. ICQ was really popular among my classmates when I was in year 7 to 9 at high school. This was right around Napster time as well I remember downloading mp3's (via dial up) and chatting with people all night.

ICQ at school was really cliquey there was a lot of "I'm going to give you my ICQ number but you can't give it to X".

Teenage me was really happy when I got the ICQ # of a girl at school I had a huge crush on (This was pre mobile phones so you couldn't exchange text messages back then or snap chats or whatever the kids use to flirt with each other these days).

When I moved away from home and started university I stopped logging in lost touch with a heap of people as a result. I can't remember my ICQ no. nowadays...

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