You may have been one of the few using ICQ and MSN after AIM. ICQ was much earlier in the chronology (we used to play with it when we got bored on IRC) and no one used MSN. :-P

MSN was (is?) pretty popular in Latin America. I had 0 "real life" friends on AIM. My few AIM buddies were people I met in games.

Indeed. I don't know about today, but back in 2006 MSN was as popular as AIM and Yahoo! worldwide and particularly strong in certain areas -- there are some countries where it was even a verb ("I'll MSN you"). But then MS changed the name to "Windows Live Messenger", underinvested, and prioritized search instead. Ah well.

is. I was just all over Central and South America, and internet cafes were always full of high school kids, every single screen full of MSN chat windows.

Indeed, here in Argentina MSN is the default chat application.

My understanding is that MSN was/is the most popular IM service most everywhere but the US (because of AIM?) and East Asia (where they have their own regionally popular services, like QQ in China).

I used all of those - and ICQ was still largely my favorite, if only because it supported offline messages.

I think its largest drawback was using account numbers, instead of allowing alphanumeric vanity names.

Let's not forget the tack-a-tack sound...

I think this is somewhat regional. I'm from Canada, and no one I know uses AIM. MSN seems to be the most common chat program, although Skype is increasing in popularity.

Yea same with me. In Canada we used MSN and when I moved back to the US it was AIM, even though MSN felt like a much better product.

>Was I the only one using ICQ, MSN, Google Chat before Facebook came along

I don't know, was you the only person on that service and thus have no-one to talk to?