Ask HN : What killed ICQ?
When I was young, I used ICQ and it was the coolest thing ever. One day, it was gone and now, it's often remembered in a sarcastic way.
I was too young to care/remember so I'm asking you : What killed ICQ?
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Anyway, AOL eventually opened up AIM to everyone and people started using it. It was easier. AIM used screennames. ICQ was cool because you could use any name you wanted but the actual user id was an 8 or 9 digit number (mine was 36915037- not sure why I remember that). It was a total pain in the ass when you wanted to add people to your friend list. Plus, on ICQ you had to receive approval from a user to add them to your buddy list and on AIM you could just add people. Sometimes, you'd sit there in pending approval purgatory wondering if you added the right person with those crazy user id's. AIM was just plain easier.
ICQ had more features and more users, but it was just easier for a lot of them to use AIM so they could chat with their dopey friends who were still using AOL. Meanwhile, AIM was updated with new features frequently and marketed heavily. ICQ still remained relatively popular, but they really sat on their asses over there. After a while AIM caught up and even experimented with video and voice chat while ICQ stayed the same for years.
Eventually, AOL purchased ICQ and basically put it out to pasture. Still, it managed to stick around for a long time. I'm not sure they were expecting that. It's the technology that just won't die.
I signed up in 1997 or 1998... haven't used it for anything in a LONG time.
Can't believe I remembered that. It sort of rhymes in my head.
By the way, I know 1 or 2 people that still remember their ICQ number... that's odd but it proves how deep ICQ was in their heart.
Also, all my friends were jumping on the MSN bandwagon (mostly due to MSN being bundled with Windows), so if I wanted to chat with them, I had to jump along with them. Peer pressure can be a bitch sometimes.
But I think most of my friends use things like Miranda or Gaim/Pidgin and not the bloat-client. Even the lesser tech-savy ones. They got it installed by the nerds ;)
And Livejournal is the dominant blog platform. I guess the network effect (resulting from being first to market?) has something to do with it.
And, BTW - 282192658. And I used to remember my first cell phone number too for a long time. That's probably because it was so cool to be able to chat / call for the first time.
Wikipedia has statistics on different services’ user bases: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaging#User_base
As common as IM is now, I recall being amazed at the concept of not having to sit on IRC all day to talk to my friends.
And just to brag, my number was 522621
As I type this, I have MirandaIM open and 5 of my close friends going back 8 years are online via ICQ. I will consider it a great shame if it ever really dies.
I specifically remember hating those numbers (because I always forgot mine) and being spitefully relieved to switch to MSN Messenger when that came out.
1) Usability - when you do a product for the masses usability and simlicity matters a lot.
2) Marketing - when you're up against Microsoft and AOL you are in trouble unless you have an excellent product (see point 1)
There's a good lesson to be learnt here for entrepreneurs.
(what killed mapquest? netscape? ...)
Also, none of my buddies complained about getting weird messages from that account. Was that the case with your account?
Upon which they called me to ask if I was pretending to be russian.