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AOL Bridges AIM and ICQ
Checkmate3 writes "Looks like AOL has finally made good on plans to integrate ICQ and AIM... eWeek talks about a new version of ICQ which will allow for users to message across the two networks." I have to agree with the sentiments expressed in the article. I can't remember the last time I used ICQ, or even what my number was.
Integration will allow people to choose which service they like better - AIM or ICQ. I don't think they are anywhere near getting rid of ICQ - it has too many users, especially overseas. Integrating with AIM will allow these people to communicate with people who like the less sophisticated AIM communicate with ICQ users. --- Addicted to adult entertainment?
Trillian provides a unified and consolidated view of all of these IM worlds - but you can't send from ICQ to AIM or vice-versa.
btw - I donated and use Trillian Pro.
Evil ZEN Scientist
We're supposed to feel good about AOL allowing AIM users to message to another AOL proerty (ICQ?)
Gee..that makes me all warm inside.
What happenned to AOL's commitment to open their platform to message to other systems? Like MSN/Yahoo/etc.
As I recall, that commitment was made as a part of the approval for the (now drastically failed) AOLTW merger.
Why am I using ICQ right now? Because it has a lot of really important features that AIM lacks. Offline messaging, more in depth profiles, and screenname formatting flexability. Sure its not great for wimps who can't remember their ICQ numbers. Of course both the ICQ and AIM clients suck so much I've used neither since I discovered Trillian, Fire, gAIM, iChat, and Jabber. Now only if they'd adopt some of the features that WASTE has, like ambiquitous encyption(although I'm being told that the latest AIM has some sort of encryption built in).
-sonic
First of all, let me remind people that these are instant messaging programs. However, they've turned into chat programs. I don't want to chat with somebody, so don't keep a resident chat window up. I want to send an instant message. One. Then I want to get an instant message. Not a chat. What ever happened to that paradigm?
Also, ICQ gives you many more status options. True, they're not all necessary. However, you have the option of letting certain people bug you when you have a certain status. So, if you wanted to set yourself as "Occupied", you're pretty much telling people you're around, but don't want to be bothered. Plus, you can allow certain important people to still contact you anyway. And, of course, there's my personal favorite: invisible mode. It's very handy for when you want to jump on to look for a specific person you need to get in touch with, but don't want to be bothered with talking to anybody else.
Oh, another thing... Screen names. It's nice to be able to pick whatever screen name you want, without it needing to be unique. It's sorta like the real world that way. Chances are slim that you'll personally know somebody with the same screen name as you, so why do they need to be completely unique? Again, ICQ has the UIN to solve this problem.
I hope I'm not the only one that feels this way. The only argument I've ever heard for not using ICQ instead of AIM is "nobody uses it." That sounds like a bad reason to me. I hope that they add these features to AIM instead of removing them from ICQ. I'd like to see the two become one. Or maybe I'd just like to see all AIM accounts get converted to ICQ accounts...
Leaving aside all the lesser-used/open-source IM clients, of MSN, AIM, Yahoo and ICQ, ICQ is the best one. MSN doesn't offer offline messages, AIM sucks, Yahoo is not too bad but ICQ is the most useable and reliable imho.
Merging it with AIM will just take it downhill I imagine...
ICQ was, at least as far as I could tell, the first truly widespread IM client, and certainly the first popular client for Windows (yes, I'm ignoring IRC and Unix's "talk"). I originally got it because it had become a requirement for my Mechwarrior 2/Netmech clan (which would put it somewhere back around 96/97). My number was ~1.1 million, so by that point it had already taken off reasonably well.
Interestingly enough, I'm pretty sure that early on ICQ had most of the features that AIM has added on in recent years, though I don't happen to have an old copy of it around to compare for sure. Unfortunately, later versions became nothing more than an exercise in "How many new buttons can we add per version?" (see this ICQ history page for an example).
Ultimately, I think the two major items that have hurt ICQ are the feature bloat and the network effect. AIM's ability to communicate with AOL users offered a huge incentive to those who didn't have AOL, and with if the people you know are on AIM, why bother with ICQ? AIM's relative simplicity didn't hurt either.
So, while ICQ may not be quite dead yet, it's certainly lost the role of leader and pioneer that it once had. It's a bit of a shame seeing an old favorite go the way of Prodigy and Compuserve, but I guess that's life on the 'Net.
Mark Erikson
It's a horrible program NOW, but it wasn't back when there was ICQ98. A cute small program that rarely crashed. Then came ICQ 99 and it's exponential bloat. It started really going downhill with the 'everything but the kitchen sink' syndrome - with all sorts of alarms and post-it notes and other crap you don't want in an IM client. After that each version got worse and worse. Thanks AOL =P
Now days I just use Miranda IM on the rare occasion I even use IM anymore. It's actually better than ICQ used to be. Extremely stable, small footprint, and extendable through really cool plugins (including talking to msn messenger clients).
IMO, The fact that ICQ uses numbers to identity users is probably part of the reason that people prefer other instant messenger services. Which would you have a better time remebering: 57544362769 or mynickname? When AOL took much of Compuserve's market it was because people loved the way AOL used names for their users and not numbers, as Compuserve did. The first step in making something user friendly is making what they use, easy to remember.
When it comes to the client I really didn't care much for it, especially the one for MacOS X. When so many friends being spread across services I opted to use multi-messenger clients such as Fire on the Mac and Trillian on the PC.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I have A real problem with what AOL has done to my favorite programs. I used ICQ a few years ago, but lost interest when none of my friends used it. (Have you loked at their user database? There must be a hundred million south east aisans!) But even worse has been WinAMP 3.0.
Nullsoft was purchased by AOL long before the latest release. Now WinAMP is not the simple, friendly, llama approved MP3 player it used to be. Now it has a web browser, video abilities, etc etc. I don't want another Microsoft Windows Media Player! Bloated is the word. All that coding for stuff I don't want and the stuff i do want doesn't work because they don't have the time to fully test it. Argh!
One more reason to keep an eye on your money.
Here in the Netherlands (a.k.a. Holland) AIM is also virtually unknown, and ICQ used to be the thing. Unfortunately everyone seems to have switched straight to M$N, now, and neither ICQ nor AIM seem to be relevant anymore.
I have an AIM account, but only because I know overseas people who use it.
(I use gaim to log on to AIM, ICQ, M$N, Yahoo, and two IRC networks at the same time - my contacts tend to be all over the place.)
My biggest concern is do these programs allow for inter-client (say Miranda to MSN or ICQ to Miranda) transfer of files? Is there a way to use the video conferencing 'tools' (and I use the word tools loosly) of MSN through any of the clients.
If all you want to do is chat this is all well and good, but I've noticed that if you want to start sharing pictures or video with family between clients and platforms (from mac to win to linux) problms arise.
NMG
I recently found my old icq number and ventured to log back in to maybe talk to some of my old friends from back when ICQ was THE messaging client. Well it turns out back then ICQ didn't store your "buddy list" online so its pretty much a waste of time. ICQ imho is a dieing messaging system. The only people I know who use it are software pirates. Not that I'm saying ICQ attracts software pirates. I don't think the liquor industry attracts organized crime either. Infact......oh nevermind.
[Just Shut Up and Do What I say]
Comment removed based on user account deletion
But none of my friends use anything but AIM so I can really only get use out of the AIM protocol. I would like to at least try out some of the others, but that would mean trying to switch over my friends who are not easily persuaded. Mostly all the people I chat with are friends from school. I just graduated High School, so maybe AIM has been our generation more than any other IM? GAIM suits me best though because of its lack of ads without using an AOL client hack, and the simplistic options such as turning off colors in messages.
The world doesn't need more plugins, the world needs fewer protocols. I read the "AOL bridges AIM and ICQ" from the perspective of hoping the AOL was moving towards the use of the Jabber protocol as a common baseline for instant messaging.
Jabber is a nice superset of existing instant messaging and chat functionality, from the programmer's perspective. It is, IMO, technically superior to ICQ, MSN, IRC, and other chat/IM protocols. The main thing that prevents it from dominating is really acceptance/buy-in from the big IM providers: AOL, MSN, ICQ, ...
you can send a message to an offline user and they will get it when they login. You can't do that with AIM. AIM says it has that buddy bounce feature, but you still have to BE there to send a message when they get back. With ICQ you just send te message, leave your computer on, and even if you aren't there, ICQ will send the message to the recipient when they log in. I know my ICQ number. It's in the early 2 million range, I've been using it for a while. MOST of my friends are on AIM, but a sizeable minority are on ICQ.
:) Hopefully they will now take the best of both worlds and make a kickass client once and for all.
AIM is just like any other stupid tech that won out. It won because people who didn't know better used it (because they have AOL). Except in this case there is no winner because AOL owns and operates them both
And this time I hope they clean up ICQ. Who the fuck thought up all those features!? Too many menus, too many stupid options. Emails, pagers, groups, retardedness. They should have just made it clean and simple.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
I'm Norwegian, that is northern Europe. I've never met anyone that says they've used AIM. Just about everyone still uses ICQ or MSN and from what I've heard that is also true of most other European countries.
Slashdot have lots of readers from other places than the US, and it seems the editors either forget about that or do not care. The rest of the world does not mimic the US in all regards.
When the editors add comments like "I can't remember the last time I used ICQ, or even what my number was." it is obviously to suggest that nobody uses ICQ. This might be true in the US, but it is probably not true of the rest of the world.
Europeans obviously still stay here despite of this, but it is quite annoying at times. There are other places in the world than the US.