

Ask HN : What killed ICQ? - dan_sim

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.<p>I was too young to care/remember so I'm asking you : What killed ICQ?
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jm4
I think it was a combination of things. If I remember correctly, AIM was an
AOL subscription exclusive in the beginning so only the dopes on there were
using it. The cool kids were on ICQ and I think there were very few AOL users
willing or able to use a separate chat client.

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.

~~~
siong1987
I know why you remember that. Because you have a "eight" digit ICQ number.
People at that time used to think that shorter ICQ ID was cooler.

~~~
alexkay
6 digits and still using it: 666778 ;-P

~~~
cnu
missed by 1?

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dennmart
I stopped using ICQ when it started to get way too slow for my computer at the
time. I remember the first versions were snappy and quick, then they started
adding more and more stuff, and it got too bloated for me. ICQ Lite was too
stripped down for me, so I looked for alternatives.

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.

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guruz
As a German, I would not call it killed. It's very poplar here.

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 ;)

~~~
raquo
In Russia too, ICQ is the dominant IM protocol. Many geeks use jabber though
(together with ICQ).

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.

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rsayers
I stopped using it because nearly everyone I knew switched to AIM which I also
did eventually.

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

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seraph321
Just figured I'd mention that ICQ never died for me and mine. It was the first
IM service I joined (I still use my original 6-digit UIN), and I just never
understood why I should change to MSN or any of the others. I long ago started
using all-in-one clients so I could talk to people on MSN, AIM, Google, etc
but my core group of friends never saw a reason to leave ICQ's network. ICQ
actually had a ton of features no one else did for quite a while. The big one
for me: it always saved your chat history (and I love to go back and look at
my conversations from ten years ago), while MSN and AIM didn't do this at
first.

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.

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nx
The numbers.

~~~
Jasber
I thought the numbers were one of the things that made it fun. Having a low
ICQ number showed you were an early adopter, much like having a short URL or
twitter name.

~~~
mseebach
Yeah, fun for the million or so first users, not so much for the next 2
billion.

I specifically remember hating those numbers (because I always forgot mine)
and being spitefully relieved to switch to MSN Messenger when that came out.

~~~
there
just like giving out an old compuserve e-mail address.

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mixmax
Two things killed ICQ

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.

~~~
dan_sim
What I learn : it's not because you're the first player in a field AND used
widespead that your product will live forever.

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mrtron
A.O.L.

(what killed mapquest? netscape? ...)

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chops
About 3 years ago, my 6-digit ICQ number got hijacked without any way of
getting it back (I had created it with a geocities.com email address). That
was when I stopped using it.

~~~
guruz
Funny. Maybe about two years ago, I could not login to my "first" ICQ account
either. Never knew why that happened.

Also, none of my buddies complained about getting weird messages from that
account. Was that the case with your account?

~~~
chops
My friends has simply notified me that my account was hijacked, as I rarely
actually logged in anymore. My friends said that they would IM my account, and
get a response either in russian, or in very broken English, informing them
that this is a russian now.

Upon which they called me to ask if I was pretending to be russian.

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vasudeva
Mine was 299961. I still remember it despite having forgotten the password
several lifetimes ago.

~~~
dan_sim
So many people remember their ICQ number, it's frightening. Do they remember
their phone number at that time?

~~~
pavel_lishin
I remember my number, but not any of my old phone numbers or addresses.
Sometimes I forget my own birthday.

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dan_sim
All I remember is that one day, it was all ICQ and the next day, it was all
MSN.

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nir
I think it was mostly multi-protocol clients, which are not limited to one
network, and products that one-upped IM like Skype or gTalk. Other than that,
is ICQ more dead than MSN messenger or Yahoo's IM or AIM?

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compay
ICQ is still very widely used among people in the internet porn business.

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Truk
I still log into both my AIM acct and my 6 digit ICQ acct. I have no friends
on ICQ any more, but I refuse to let it go.

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kschua
Hi, this is my first post here. Couldn't resist it when people were rattling
off their ICQ number. Mine's 1010378.

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volida
\- Windows MSN Messenger \- Network effects \- Hesitation to adapt the product

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tanco
MSN Messenger pre-installed in Windows.

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gmcerveny
The default audible keyboard...

~~~
dan_sim
Now I remember... all the sounds were ON by default. The "oh-oh" everytime
someone sent you a message... so agressing...

~~~
mattmichielsen
I'm totally going to set that as all the default windows sounds on my
coworker's computer who used to be my ICQ contact years ago.

~~~
zandorg
I made that my sound in Trillian too. Except, I had to edit it in audio editor
Cooledit to compress it, etc.

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WALoeIII
114248050

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fimblo
their gawd-ugly homepage.

