ICQ, a once-popular IM, is shutting down on June 26, it says on its website. It once served tens of millions of users daily.

  • Ledivin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    28·
    1 month ago

    Serious question: did anyone here actually know it was still around? I’m one of the more tech-savvy people I know and haven’t touched ICQ in well over a decade at this point

    • Godort@lemm.eeEnglish
      8·
      1 month ago

      Not at all.

      It’s been well over 20 years since I’ve heard anyone talk about it, and its probably been 25 since I used it myself.

    • toofpic@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      1 month ago

      I was working in Russian IT sector at the time when the government tried to block Telegram. For a few days we had some communication problems because we ised TG for all project chats and communication with most customers. We worked as contractors making an app with/for Mail Ru Group (now the whole company is rebranded as VK, but it’s actually a lot of different businesses). This is when I got to know that product manager I was working with was also the product manager for ICQ. And that we had to switch to fucking ICQ for daily conversations because that was their default backup method. Crazy!
      I found out that it was facelifted up to the point where you couldn’t see the difference between it, TG or WhatsApp.
      After about a week, TG was updated and it had a dynamic server connection (not a hardcoded one), so IP blocks stopped working and we returned to tg.
      I still remember my number from the 2000s: 173114498. Though I lost access to that account a long time ago

  • Kokesh@lemmy.worldEnglish
    21·
    1 month ago

    My first ever messaging platform. Still can vividly hear the notification sound… RIP

  • megabat@lemm.eeEnglish
    20·
    1 month ago

    Holy crap I remembered my 7 digit id and password! Everyone on my list was “last seen a long time ago” and there’s no chat history.

  • dave@hal9000@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    1 month ago

    Wow, I thought it shut down loooong ago. I wonder if there’s any way to retrieve an archive of your IMs or anything like that? If only I remembered my number…

  • jennwiththesea@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    1 month ago

    Wow, end of an era. ICQ was how I kept in touch with friends after I left for college. Back then, you had to pay per text on your phone or have a limited number each month, and ICQ was free.