ICQ will stop working from June 26 • Hacker News Board

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#601

Post by LinXitoW » Sat, May 25, 2024, 6:49 AM UTC

toast0 wrote: post #255

lxgr wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> 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.

245032701. The first number I ever memorized, and likely the only number eternally burned into my mind.

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#602

Post by trilbyglens » Sat, May 25, 2024, 6:51 AM UTC

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #593

RajT88 wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Whatsapp in non US world

WhatsApp is European much more than it is American. Most Americans are just using SMS like cave people.

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#603

Post by Dalewyn » Sat, May 25, 2024, 6:53 AM UTC

bayindirh wrote: post #506

dkga wrote: post #470

I will forever treasure my ICQ memories. The sounds it made. The moving image when it was connecting. Listening in Winamp to one of only a few dozen possible songs that I had carefully downloaded. Being able to randomly connect to people you would filter. Yes, I want to talk to someone more or less my age but in Iceland. Or any other country. But most of all, the feeling of being connected. As a teenager in the autis…

ICQ was the chat tool of the democratic internet, or internet of the people if you prefer the term. After companies started dominating the internet, it was never be the same. We thought that any company would play by our rules, but they poisoned us with their research, gamification, single way information flow, and walled gardens. This is why I moved to small web. I miss the old internet dearly.

>ICQ was the chat tool of the democratic internet, or internet of the people if you prefer the term.

That's IRC.

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#604

Post by vaylian » Sat, May 25, 2024, 6:56 AM UTC

Terr_ wrote: post #428

vaylian wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why should ICQ be a social network?

What qualities do you consider unique to a "social network" system (beyond its own self-marketing or the time-period in which it arose) that aren't qualities already present in ICQ, E-mail, IRC, newsgroups, etc?

One distinct quality is that as a user you actually have the possibility to navigate the network. On ICQ you only see your own contact list. You cannot see how many friends/contacts/followers/relations anyone else has. You cannot traverse the network from your direct friends to indirect friends.

A social network puts the connections you have with other people prominently on display for everyone to see. The number of "friends" you have is a central social status metric on social networks.

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#605

Post by Dalewyn » Sat, May 25, 2024, 7:01 AM UTC

An end of an era. I'm sad.

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#606

Post by swores » Sat, May 25, 2024, 7:03 AM UTC

trilbyglens wrote: post #602

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatsapp in non US world

WhatsApp is European much more than it is American. Most Americans are just using SMS like cave people.

The 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?)

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#607

Post by jen_h » Sat, May 25, 2024, 7:05 AM UTC

Wow. Blast from the past. Just tried to log in after 20 years and it worked…but I didn’t get farther than it requiring full name and a phone number and lots of other mobile web badness before noping out.

If they still have those account creds and first names, y’all reckon VKontacte has our old messages? :X

Oh well, have great memories, pouring one out for ICQ tonight.

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#608

Post by DaleCurtis » Sat, May 25, 2024, 7:07 AM UTC

I still remembered my id from all those years ago, 1569200. I was excited to read others were logging in with their old numbers, so I tried the password I thought I had used, but no luck.

Feeling adventurous, I dug through my archives and found my old ICQ database and followed https://sec.sipsik.net/tuts/net/icq.txt and used the code at https://web.archive.org/web/20070209002044/https://rejetto.c... to decrypt my password...

Sadly it was the one I had tried :( It was a fun trip through nostalgia at least!

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#609

Post by Sakos » Sat, May 25, 2024, 7:10 AM UTC

dkga wrote: post #470

I will forever treasure my ICQ memories. The sounds it made. The moving image when it was connecting. Listening in Winamp to one of only a few dozen possible songs that I had carefully downloaded. Being able to randomly connect to people you would filter. Yes, I want to talk to someone more or less my age but in Iceland. Or any other country. But most of all, the feeling of being connected. As a teenager in the autis…

I have no idea what you're talking about. Everybody in Germany used ICQ. MSN and ICQ were concurrently popular in different regions. Everybody I knew from the US or other English-speaking parts of the world used MSN. There was no mass move from ICQ to MSN that lead to ICQ's demise, they basically both died at the same time when Facebook came out to the general public.

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#610

Post by guerrilla » Sat, May 25, 2024, 7:11 AM UTC

lproven wrote: post #444

HumblyTossed wrote: post #245

Back in the day, messaging was pretty awesome. You could use an app like Pidgin and pretty much talk to anyone no matter what color their bubbles were. Today, I have to have one app for all the different ways to get ahold of someone. It's pretty annoying, but we did it to ourselves. Yay.

Try Ferdium, RAMbox, or Station. All FOSS. https://ferdium.org/ https://rambox.app/ https://getstation.com/

These all suck comapred to Pidgen. Pidgen was one UI. This is just a bunch of webapps shoved into the same window/app and it's ugly and awkward as all fuck to use.