News 90s instant messaging service shuts down after 28 years — ICQ will stop working from June 26

[Admin]

The once-popular messaging and VOIP platform ICQ is scheduled to shut down on June 26. It was introduced almost thirty years ago and gained an impressive userbase during the pre-social media era.

90s instant messaging service shuts down after 28 years — ICQ will stop working from June 26 : Read more

 

[King_V]

and had 2.5 daily active users

I'm hoping this was meant to be 2.5 million users. 2.5 users is gonna be a bit difficult to explain.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

I can see it becoming Russia's "official" IM client, like QQ to China, especially if they develop their own OS. Between Telegram and Discord, as well as social media oriented things like Whatsapp, I don't see another service breaking through worldwide unless they do something very different

 

[CmdrShepard]

R.I.P. ICQ, you served us well... I remeber using it back in the day. It was simple but at least it wasn't ad-infested with premium upsells like the messengers of today.

 

[DSzymborski]

Yup, I had a pretty low ICQ number back in the day (153167). Used it a lot to talk to other friends in college in 1996 and 1997, though AOLIM kinda surpassed that in my usage. Logged in last month out of curiosity and I can still get in, but my contact list was all gone. I had been curious to see if it had been queueing up any unread messages for the last 25 years or so.

 

[King_V]

Yup, I had a pretty low ICQ number back in the day (153167). Used it a lot to talk to other friends in college in 1996 and 1997, though AOLIM kinda surpassed that in my usage. Logged in last month out of curiosity and I can still get in, but my contact list was all gone. I had been curious to see if it had been queueing up any unread messages for the last 25 years or so.

Thinking back, I remember being introduced to it by a friend who had a 5-digit ICQ number (in the 58,xxx range if I recall correctly), and mine was a 1xx,xxx number, I wanna say in a rough ballpark of yours, though I am not 100% sure.

Can't recall when I last logged in, though. Nor am I even 100% sure of my username. I know that the email I was using at the time no longer exists, so even if I were of a mind to log back in/password recovery/whatever, I probably couldn't.

 

[brandonjclark]

Count me as someone who never used this service.

 

[TheOtherOne]

I'm hoping this was meant to be 2.5 million users. 2.5 users is gonna be a bit difficult to explain.

Not if you think the entire userbase was the lead cast of Two and Half Men! 😏

 

[King_V]

Not if you think the entire userbase was the lead cast of Two and Half Men! 😏