America Online to Buy Internet Chat Service for $287 Million (1998)
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Re: America Online to Buy Internet Chat Service for $287 Million (1998)
#2Either 300mill was a steal for AOL or Valuations are out of hand?...
Which one is it?
Re: America Online to Buy Internet Chat Service for $287 Million (1998)
#3Either 300mill was a steal for AOL or Valuations are out of hand?... Which one is it?
A steal? Nobody uses ICQ anymore. AOL ended up selling ICQ for $187 million in 2010, a big loss on that deal!
Re: America Online to Buy Internet Chat Service for $287 Million (1998)
#4Is it bad that I can still remember my 7 digit ICQ number? It's probably been over 14 years since I've used it. I use to judge everyone that used AIM but eventually I switched over to AIM because all my friends in school had AIM.
Re: America Online to Buy Internet Chat Service for $287 Million (1998)
#5Is it bad that I can still remember my 7 digit ICQ number? It's probably been over 14 years since I've used it. I use to judge everyone that used AIM but eventually I switched over to AIM because all my friends in school had AIM.
I just knew one of the first comments was gonna be about "my x digit ICQ number". (mine was 6)
Re: America Online to Buy Internet Chat Service for $287 Million (1998)
#6Either 300mill was a steal for AOL or Valuations are out of hand?... Which one is it?
Well, 300M for 12M users, which is a lot fewer than the services that get bought for big numbers today.
But magnitude of the money aside, has an online messaging service ever been able to really turn a huge profit? chongli points out that AOL eventually sold ICQ for less than they paid, and I can't think of any others off the top of my head (AIM didn't prevent AOL from being overtaken by Facebook, say). They seem to be very un-sticky in terms of user retention by their nature.
Re: America Online to Buy Internet Chat Service for $287 Million (1998)
#7I assume the motivation for pulling this out of the archive is the WhatsApp purchase. However, I don't think this comparison is truly fair. Not only is WhatsApp monthly adding over twice the userbase ICQ had at the time of purchase, but it is also actually collecting revenue from them. WhatsApp is a real company with real monetization strategies.
Re: America Online to Buy Internet Chat Service for $287 Million (1998)
#8Is this an ironic comment on Facebook's recent purchase of Whatsapp?
Re: America Online to Buy Internet Chat Service for $287 Million (1998)
#9Is it bad that I can still remember my 7 digit ICQ number? It's probably been over 14 years since I've used it. I use to judge everyone that used AIM but eventually I switched over to AIM because all my friends in school had AIM.
Ha, nope. I still remember my number too. Crazy.
Re: America Online to Buy Internet Chat Service for $287 Million (1998)
#10Is it bad that I can still remember my 7 digit ICQ number? It's probably been over 14 years since I've used it. I use to judge everyone that used AIM but eventually I switched over to AIM because all my friends in school had AIM.
I just knew one of the first comments was gonna be about "my x digit ICQ number". (mine was 6)
Sorry to ruin the party... but I had a 5 digit ICQ number. I used to work there.