I met my wife on ICQ. I had random chat turned on and she said, "Hello." That was a long time ago
Did she ever meet anyone interesting doing that?
Jk, of course. It was just too good of a setup to ignore.
Not as far as I know.
Me too. I hope they're different people
My standard reply was "hailing frequencies open." Needless to say it was the opening line that let multiple women know that I was single. Surprisingly it had a 100% success rate. I was the best nerd.
I had no idea ICQ was even still operational. Good on them for making it as long as they did.
I was never an ICQ user, but it's always sad seeing such long-standing icons of the internet shut down.
it’s always sad seeing such long-standing icons of the internet shut down.
A reminder of how much fun Web 1.0 was, not the walled-gardened, enshittified, corporatized, ad-riddled rage baiter it is now.
I always said way back in the early 2000s that once corporations figured out the internet, it and society in general would be very screwed. Their early attempts at trying to make things go viral and create engagement were laughably bad. Then they hired a bunch of psychologists and sociologists, bought up everything, and the rest is history.
Man, I am so sad now.
I miss the original internet. Back when it was a place for nerds and geeks, before commercial exploitation and SEO and Adpocalypse
The early version of what's now Microsoft's game suite in Windows was one of the coolest things I've seen on the Internet. It was a virtual gaming village where you could go sit at tables and play chess or checkers or cards with people from around the world. It worked 100% fine on 14.4k dialup.
Microsoft bought whatever that was and completely ruined it, just like they ruin everything else they buy.
Good on them for making it as long as they did.
They didn't though, it was sold to a Russian company many years ago.
Uh oh!
*My favorite random icq sound finding it's way into music https://youtu.be/nZHFy3YfagU
ICQ was still on?
Right?! Like it wasn't already shutdown. The news is that it was still operational!
Edit: grammar
ICQ was still around? I thought it died ages ago!
It had. This thing only has branding in common. A different protocol, a different set of features (no contact directory), and while they had the old database of everything, they deemed a good idea to not preserve it, so old UINs don't exist.
Two wtf here.
One, icq was still online? I stopped using that one aim got popular and everyone had it.
And two, vk owns icq??
Okay, can we all acknowledge that ICQ died when they nuked pretty much all of the accounts for no good reason?
While it's true it's shutting down, it was effectively dead for years. This is just the death rattle.
ICQ died the day they were bought by AOL.
I remember downloading almost the complete catalogue of Sega Dreamcast games through ICQ, along with plenty of rooms where “A/S/L?” was a common greeting.
Old enough/yes please/anywhere you'd like
I wonder how many old accounts I have from my childhood floating around, long forgotten, created well before the days of using a password manager
Meanwhile IRC and Usenet are still doing fine.
Those are protocols, so the servers/services that run than can come and go. XMPP, which was at least inspired by ICQ, will probably be around forever, similarly.
I met an interesting Argentinian girl through ICQ. A co-worker ended up getting their inbox filled with large attachments from an overseas office with fast internet. We were still on dial-up. We just had pop3 access, no online front end. I stayed in the office over night to download the files so the connection wouldn't be interrupted by someone else accessing the line. To pass the time, I downloaded ICQ and started chatting with the Argentinian girl. She introduced me to this song.
Great memories.
knock knock knock in the middle of the nicht because i forgot to turn off my speakers, and the whole household would wake up 😂
Oh wauw! I think ICQ 98b was the best version ever! Then everyone switched to MSN, and down hill went the internet (for me anyway)
Icq was bought a while ago and the buyer nuked the original user database. Not long ago I found my login info saved on an old zip drive and tried it. Was hoping my old buddies might still be there, hahahah.
Nope, icq as most remember it was toast maybe a decade ago.
18434 Will never forget it. So many good memories there
Damn, five figures. Nice! 912800 here.
I had the app on my phone, just to check in on my friendslist. None of them had logged on since about 2004 or so, at the latest.
How do you people remember your ICQ numbers? I don't remember what I did last week half the time.
66618055 I never tried to get a better number because 666
666 One Boss
Icq numbers that go HARD
I just recently tried to log into my old icq account. It didn’t let me unless I provided a phone number so I noped the fuck out.
It was interesting how random people came to talk to you and were really trying to get to know you. I don't think that would work in modern day internet.
I knew they were around because at times I randomly remembered my ICQ number and I tried logging in, but they won't let you if you forgot your password.
33214481
Never forgot my number. I wonder if it's still active.
37571887
Forgot my password.
Been trying to work out what it was to login for years.
ICQ was still online!?!?!
I stopped using that shit like 25 years ago. Thought died in the late 90's
Haven't used it in many years. But I remember having a lot of fun with it in the 90s. A friend from the UK told me about it, and we used it to stay in touch.
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