this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
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The bottom of the article links to the history (individual features) of other IM programs from that era as well like ICQ and Yahoo Messenger.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It was very popular within my friends up until the skype merger. At that point they went "i aint usin skype lmao"

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 days ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago

It was awesome. Especially paired with the msn messenger plus mod.

Near the end of its time and also when WiFi was taking off, I had friends with everyone in a uni house, but their WiFi was quite unreliable, so every hour or so I'd get 6 "person is online" pop up toasts appear simultaneously, stacked up on top of each other.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 days ago (3 children)

well, the same as the others really: Time.

I think once SMS and phone apps became the norm over having Messenger apps on our Desktops all the time, that was pretty much it for these applications over all. It was a long, slow death. But MSN was one of the firsts to call it quits if I recall right. Oddly the IM app I liked the most. It's just not many of my friends used it. They were all AIM/AOL users.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

The one thing these messengers had over texts was presence notifications. I remember jumping through hoops to get aim working on my Motorola v188 so that I could be notified every time my crush came online and I could send her a “hey what’s going on”… only for it to be ignored.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I miss Adium, I used it for a bunch of protocols, and I customized the CSS/html to make it look really awesome.

I had an app called snakeskin or something to skin my Mac OS X to be dark themed.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Wow, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Adium was awesome, that was the golden age of computing and the internet in my opinion.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

With Linux and other FOSS projects surging in popularity, I dare say we’re in for another.

But, sadly, companies don’t seem too interested in making good software for that sake of it being good anymore. Now it’s all about getting you hooked on an eternal subscription.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I certainly hope so. It’s been great seeing PopOS and Linux Mint pushing the bar on what a good linux desktop experience can be.

I’d love to see Linux become a stronger competitor to macos (which is what I’ve used for almost 20 years).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Absolutely adore PopOS. I can’t wait for cosmic to be finished!

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 days ago (9 children)

I never knew anybody who used it. I had one contact on ICQ. Everybody else used AIM.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think this is another one of those cases where the US does something different to the rest of the world: the majority of people were using msn messenger but the US was using aim.

[–] captain_aggravated 2 points 1 day ago

AIM was released in 1997, MSN in 1999. AIM was at the time the biggest ISP in the United States, so AIM was pretty uniquely marketed to us.

It was my observation that you had two main camps: Those whose home was AIM, and those whose home was MSN. And the deciding factor was probably if you used AOL as your ISP. There were people who didn't know you could get an AIM account if you weren't an AOL customer. Those who didn't use AOL probably went the same way others did around the world, MSN messenger was built into Windows so it was the obvious one to use.

[–] Imgonnatrythis 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Remember when icq could message aim users though? That was so badass.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 days ago (6 children)

remember trillian? or pidgin was it called? you could message every service.

that was badass.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

Pidgin still seems to active lol

https://keep.imfreedom.org/pidgin/

Wonder who still uses it.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

MSN could do the same with Yahoo Messenger users, for a while at least.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

In the UK MSN was pretty ubiquitous.

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[–] wildbus8979 11 points 2 days ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The letters in bold spell "gold", just in case you didn't see it.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I remember I started using more Skype after it MSN Messenger.

But I'd say it got killed by WhatsApp on mobile phones.

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