I never used ICQ but I have listened to this song on repeat since 2007
https://youtu.be/xVdMiHmnf_I?si=5rwC12kLsNZ0u7ON&t=74
ICQ will stop working from June 26
291–300 of 776 posts
Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
> didn't support offline messages ICQ did support offline messages, from the beginning afaik, too. I had a 6-digit uin (485358 or something similar), until it got banned for running a bot (whoops). To the sibling reply, I think AIM and ICQ did have interop on messages at some point, it was much later than when ICQ moved protocols to OSCAR and TOK though.
Oh, did I mix it up with MSN then, or maybe early Skype? Or did this possibly happen after the OSCAR migration? I vividly remember being amazed by offline delivery in Jabber, so at least one of ICQ or MSN must have not had it for me to even notice.
I can't remember, but I don't think MSN had offline messages. And I don't think ICQ lost offline messaging in the OSCAR transition, IIRC, ICQ moved to OSCAR with offline messages, then AIM got them, then AIM and ICQ could talk for a while (but all my ICQ contacts that I kept had moved to AIM or MSN by then anyway).
As I recall, originally, the ICQ client polled the server via UDP to see if it had any messages, and then you would do peer to peer for online messaging. But when you logged in, you'd get a cascade of the offline messages (uh, uh, uh, uh-oh)
Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26
#293All I can say is: "Uh oh!" https://youtu.be/RhGHerssyk4
This is my text message tone for a few key family members. It brings me joy on the rare occasions my phone isn’t muted.
Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26
#294Reminds me of a simpler time when messaging was universal, not a Machiavellian marketing scheme to generate social friction in order to sell more phones.
Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26
#295Seems to be offline.
Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26
#296This makes me sad. I mean, I haven't logged in in about 20 years now, and couldn't if I wanted to (don't have the password or access to the email address). But I had a low five digit user number, and built a lot of relationships on ICQ (some of which continue today!). It was my main method of electronic communication in college. I had romantic relationships live and die on ICQ. Another reminder of how things change o…
4125222 I still remember it but not the pass
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I find it amusing that I still remember this right off the bat despite not having used it for 15 years, but I don't remember my phone number from the same time period.
Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26
#2971303789 Serious question - why do so many people remember our ICQ numbers? I don’t remember what user-facing function it served. Was that actually the identifier we shared with people to connect? I suppose it also came at a time for a lot of us where things seemed to wedge into our brains more easily.
It is from a time when we were used to remember phone numbers, and where we shared our phone numbers to keep in touch (calls, sms). ICQ directly picked on that and it was just another „phone number“. Unfortunately I only remember the first half of mine after so many years. In the age of smartphones, at least my brain degenerated to not be able to recall more than a handful of important phone numbers.
Strangely enough, I don't remember my phone number at that time, but I do remember my ICQ#
Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26
#298This makes me sad. I mean, I haven't logged in in about 20 years now, and couldn't if I wanted to (don't have the password or access to the email address). But I had a low five digit user number, and built a lot of relationships on ICQ (some of which continue today!). It was my main method of electronic communication in college. I had romantic relationships live and die on ICQ. Another reminder of how things change o…
I have similar sentimental memories of ICQ. One highlight was being able to connect to it from my phone for the first time; first on my first smartphone (Symbian), then from my "non-smart" Sony Ericsson that succeeded it, via some Java Jabber client and a Jabber-to-ICQ bridge! (Unfortunately nobody else that I knew had it on their phones, so I could only reach people in front of their PCs at home.) On the other hand,…
The "proper" way of using ICQ from your phone was Jimm, an unofficial Java client. I was the cool kid with a patched Siemens phone, which could run native apps, so I used NatICQ.elf instead.
Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
> didn't support offline messages ICQ did support offline messages, from the beginning afaik, too. I had a 6-digit uin (485358 or something similar), until it got banned for running a bot (whoops). To the sibling reply, I think AIM and ICQ did have interop on messages at some point, it was much later than when ICQ moved protocols to OSCAR and TOK though.
Oh, did I mix it up with MSN then, or maybe early Skype? Or did this possibly happen after the OSCAR migration? I vividly remember being amazed by offline delivery in Jabber, so at least one of ICQ or MSN must have not had it for me to even notice.
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.
Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26
#300This makes me sad. I mean, I haven't logged in in about 20 years now, and couldn't if I wanted to (don't have the password or access to the email address). But I had a low five digit user number, and built a lot of relationships on ICQ (some of which continue today!). It was my main method of electronic communication in college. I had romantic relationships live and die on ICQ. Another reminder of how things change o…
I just logged in for the first time in over 25 years a few weeks ago. I found https://web.icq.com/ which does not require an email address: only the ID and password. And back then I used a single password for everything.
And it worked! All my old online friends from my childhood were there, my profile message, etc. While most were offline, a few showed up as online and I quickly messaged them!
But my excitement died down as no one responded. Were their accounts hijacked? Is that status invalid? I have no idea. But I was disappointed. It's still cool the service is up all this time.