With ICQ shutting down on June 26, 2024, I can’t help but feel nostalgic. Remember your old ICQ UIN? I tried to find mine but no luck. How about you? Do you remember yours?
ICQ was the first messaging software I truly loved and the one that got me into the messaging industry. I still hear its distinctive message notification sound. Back when most users were on dial-up, ICQ’s presence feature was a game changer.
Created by Mirabilis in 1996, ICQ was a trailblazer, soon followed by competitors like Yahoo and Microsoft. As an XMPP developer, this moment highlights the value of open standards. Jabber, which evolved into XMPP, was born to centralize all messengers through gateways. Unlike proprietary systems, XMPP offers a decentralized and flexible framework that gives users more control and fosters innovation.
This is the end of an era. ICQ lasted 27 years. IRC (Internet Relay Chat), an open protocol, outlived it. So, let’s celebrate and gather in 2026 when XMPP will have lived longer than ICQ. The future is open and federated!
Mine was 28454633. I don’t miss it since my Jabber-Id is equivalent to my email address.
My husband and I met in a Yahoo Chat Room in 1998, but very quickly moved to ICQ chat because we just wanted to get to know each other and not be disturbed. We both loved that ICQ was live chat. There was no typing things in and editing… what you said was instantly displayed to your chat partner. It was REAL. I was from Georgia, USA and he was from Essex, England. I moved to England, and love it here and love my husband. We celebrated 25 years of marriage in 2023 – still going strong. We feel like ICQ played a major role in our early relationship. We must have had pretty low membership numbers in 1998.