ICQ will stop working from June 26 • Hacker News Board

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#671

Post by bangaroo » Sat, May 25, 2024, 1:48 PM UTC

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #592

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…

Wasn't icq the client where to send messages, you had to use alt+i? That alone was the worst possible ux choice for a chat client

I don’t remember that but I do remember a lot about the way messaging worked on it to be kind of clunky by modern messaging standards. At least early on I don’t think you saw messages you received in context of the conversation? That’s a distinct memory I have.

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#672

Post by damethos » Sat, May 25, 2024, 1:49 PM UTC

So many good memories from those old days. I still remember my ICQ number even though I have not used it for so many years. R.I.P. ICQ!

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#673

Post by jeromegv » Sat, May 25, 2024, 1:52 PM UTC

Sakos wrote: post #609

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.

That’s what happened in my network in canada. It was ICQ first, then MSN became popular while Hotmail was becoming popular and people moved away from icq to msn. Once the switch happened, Icq disappeared very quickly.

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#674

Post by darkwater » Sat, May 25, 2024, 2:04 PM UTC

I might or might not use part of my UIN as a salt in some passwords...

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#675

Post by mattl » Sat, May 25, 2024, 2:13 PM UTC

sgarland wrote: post #663

bayindirh wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's IRC. IRC is the other one , not the only one. However, Discord is eating its lunch in these days, sadly.

I can’t imagine that the typical IRC user has any interest in Discord. They are wildly different in every conceivable way.

Unfortunately projects are increasingly using Discord or Slack instead of IRC.

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#676

Post by aryonoco » Sat, May 25, 2024, 2:17 PM UTC

netsharc wrote: post #619

swores wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

Asia too. Australia too. So again it's the Fahrenheit users being different... Edit: I looked it up, maybe not Australia...

WhatsApp and FB Messenger are equally popular in Australia.

I'd pre pandemic FB Messenger was definitely more popular but there's been a gradual but noticible shift to WhatsApp since.

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#677

Post by carmalarm » Sat, May 25, 2024, 2:20 PM UTC

debo_ wrote: post #77

All I can say is: "Uh oh!" https://youtu.be/RhGHerssyk4

Does anyone know of a good video showing the old ICQ? Something like this for AIM: https://youtu.be/JjbV7FydctM

I want to add it to https://www.stumbleback.net

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#678

Post by aryonoco » Sat, May 25, 2024, 2:22 PM UTC

ungamedplayer wrote: post #584

sourcecodeplz wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICQ was nice but everyone moved on to Yahoo Messenger. That was the bomb. Truly unbelievable Yahoo didn't capitalize on that. Everyone used it.

I don't think everyone did. Maybe it's local to your circle of contacts. From what I remember yahoo barely made a dent here in Australia.

It was absolutely based on location.

after ICQ, from what I remember AOL Messenger was the dominant force in the US, MSN was very popular in many countries, but across Asia, Middle East, and many Eastern European countries, Yahoo Messenger was the de facto standard.

Not dissimilar to the situation we have today with WhatsApp and WeChat and iMessage. Except back then you could use pidgin or trillian as multi protocol clients which solved the issue. Somehow, we have regressed so much in this area in the last 20 years.

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#679

Post by blfr » Sat, May 25, 2024, 2:28 PM UTC

Braini wrote: post #643

kazinator wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ICQ was the chat tool of the democratic internet It was proprietary client software released in 1996 and bought by AOL two years later. It relies on a service operated by a single party, which is now sunsetting it. According to the Wikipedia article, when ICQ was under AOL's stewardship, "AOL pursued an aggressive policy regarding alternative ("unauthorized") ICQ clients." The article details all the tactics that A…

That is correct but it was still more open than what we have now with the current services. 3rd party clients and multi-protocol messengers we don't have at all anymore.

Isn't that what Beeper or Ferdium are doing? And there's still libpurple/Pidgin.

[1] https://www.beeper.com/

[2] https://ferdium.org/

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#680

Post by trustno2 » Sat, May 25, 2024, 2:30 PM UTC

RajT88 wrote: post #481

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…

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.

ICQ was bought by... uhh Russians? Israelis? Something like that... and was changed several times what it actually is; when I tried it recently, it was just a WhatsApp clone; they even removed all the old ICQ number accounts.