Damn, my 7-digit’s been beaten out.
By some old fogies.
So, people hacked your email to get your icq number?
What are the ICQ numbers at these days anyway?
I can’t find any record of my old ICQ number. I know I used it in the mid 90’s. I do recall the uh-oh audio clip, and when you back-spaced, you would erase the characters on the remote chat screen. In my pre-married days I had an awesomely lascivious proposition come through to me one morning via ICQ. I rode my bike over the Brooklyn bridge to the young lady’s house in Manhattan so fast I think I made some bike messengers cry.
I was talking to Cindy Vanous, who used to write for me at CGM and now works in my group at my current job, and she mentioned she actually had a five-digit ICQ number, but misplaced the login info and signed up for a new six-digit code. She had no idea how much cred the five-digit code would (briefly) have eventually.
I always thought Cindy Yans and Cindy Vanous were the same person.
No, I’ve seen them both in the same place at the same time. Plus, if they were the same person, it’d be pretty impressive for one author to pull off such distinctly different writing styles. :)
five digit… damn, I always imagined they started at six digits (like mine).
Noticed that ICQ didn’t let me change to a password longer than 8 characters. Good thing I used a simple password back then, since my email address was long since gone.
Yeah, my ICQ recovery address was [email protected]. :) Always my favorite dial-up service.
I have the ICQ offline message .wav file some where. That’s the most memorable IM tune at that time.
What does use these days for messaging then? I don’t know anyone who uses Skype and personally I use Gmail only with one friend, but thats about it.
Did instant messaging die?
Social media probably hit it hard. Facebook and Google+.
Everyone realises MS bought Skype for Enterprise and Commercial business, right? All that technology (IM, presence, voice, video, collaboration, etc) is being integrated with their voice platform - Lync, so they can compete with the likes of Cisco, Avaya, Mitel, etc.
Yeah, stick a fork in 'er, she’s done.
I use Pidgin and similar services to stay signed into multiple clients. One old friend still hangs onto MSN, a couple more use AOL, a few more use Gmail, and then several are Facebook-chat only. I was a camp counselor for gifted youth for a few years, and in the last couple, I noticed them exclusively trading Skype IDs.
Very cool kids and I always enjoyed keeping up with them to see how they did as life went on, but I felt a bit creepy asking to voice chat with children, so I stayed out of that, but it definitely seems to be the go-to (aside from texting) for the younger crowd.
Facebook killed it in Ireland. No-one uses Skype for anything other than video calling relatives and friends who have emigrated.
If you’re under 30 and don’t have Facebook, you’re essentially a social pariah. It’s even worse for kids at University age.
I tried to set Skype up for my mom to use for IM with me once WLM dies. On the Mac, it automatically opens its window when you start the program, even when loading it when you boot. WTF? Really dumb design decision, and complaints about it in the Skype forums with no solutions. The only thing you can do is not have it load Skype on startup, which kind of defeats the point.
So, I discovered that some time in the eight years since I bought Trillian Pro, they added a Mac version. So I installed that for her, and put it on my own system for the first time in years.
(Yeah, she could just close the Skype window on boot, but that bugs her.)
Facebook would be an option if they did a better job of making chat requests obvious.
Can’t you report Skype issues internally to whatever subdivision of Mothercorp, Denny?
Skype for Windows for broken for over a year where Jumplist and right-click->Quit weren’t options on the taskbar if UAC was low/disabled.
Do you know there is a official ICQ Metro App in Windows Store? (for Windows 8)
5.x is plain missing features which you need to use it commercially, like a proper call log. It’s like they’re trying to drive away paying small business users.
I hope they are planing to improve Skype IM features until the switch next year, I started using it and as an IM client is behind Windows Live messenger in features. On a more positive note is less aggressive in advertising and it doesn’t have flash ads that on occasion destroyed the CPU on Live messenger.