Yeah, ICQ was peer to peer for online messaging as I recall in the say 97-99 timeframe. I think Yahoo was too. They'd fall back to server message passing, of course.

But this was just for messaging (and file transfer), not for presence/buddy list which was all server driven.

In that time frame, few had firewalls or NAT or two computers at the same location, so (server mediated) peer to peer just worked unless you were on a corporate network.

There were even some tools that showed you the IP, the "real status" and etc. of your contacts. The 9 year old me have felt like the greatest hacker of all time when using those tools :)

Sounds like a very secure platform!

Oh it surely wasn't, but it also surely was fun!