RIP ICQ: Remembering a classic messaging app that was way ahead of its time

 

After nearly 28 years in operation, messaging service ICQ will cease operations on June 26, according to its current owners.

 

You'd be forgiven for not realizing it still existed; the proto-IM service hasn't been in the mainstream since the 2000s. But in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it simultaneously laid the groundwork for direct messaging and social networking as we came to know it in the post-Facebook era.

 

ICQ was something of an accident, as popular as it became. Created by four Israeli computer geeks, it wasn't even meant to be the original idea.

 

In the wake of the Netscape IPO, which heralded a new era of tech-based money-making ventures, the four of them were looking for an idea to run with. Their initial plan was to launch a service that would make checking beeper messages easier. They invented ICQ as a tool for themselves while working on that project.

 

In the time of dial-up, staying online all the time to receive messages or chat on platforms like IRC wasn't a thing for everybody. Most folks had to keep those lines open for phone calls.

 

As a result, the creators of ICQ were getting frustrated that they weren't seeing each other's online messages. They developed ICQ as a better way to communicate from their homes while collaborating on the (now pointless) beeper project.

 

The application didn't have much marketing behind it, but it spread quickly by word of mouth—particularly in nascent online gaming communities around multi-user dungeons (MUDs), early deathmatches, and so on. More than anything else, the bearer of ICQ's legacy today is Discord.

 

ICQ was eventually purchased by AOL, and it lost ground to more heavily financially backed services like AIM and MSN. Then came MySpace, Facebook, social media, iMessage, and so on, leaving no more room for old ICQ.

 

In 2010, ICQ was acquired by a company that was then called Mail.ru, a major Russian internet applications provider. That company eventually morphed and changed its name to VK, and it has been keeping ICQ on life support as a sort of Russian Skype alternative since.

Messaging memories

In light of the news, a few Ars staffers have shared some of their memories about ICQ.

 

ICQ had several unique features for the time. Those of us who used it might still remember our ICQ numbers; there weren't user names, but instead something more akin to a phone number. The earlier someone joined, the shorter their number could be, so there was prestige in a shorter number. (Mine was 6377119—seven digits was respectable, but not the apex.)

 

I signed up because I was playing the online game Meridian 59, and its community largely used ICQ for out-of-game communication.

 

ICQ offered online profiles, and it was through those profiles that I met my first girlfriend in high school. I lived in Springfield, Missouri, and she lived in Joplin, which is somewhat nearby. She was looking for folks to meet with similar interests, somehow stumbled on my profile, and saw that I was interested in writing and journalism. A classic 1990s summer teen romance followed.

 

It was the first thing I could think of in my life that resembled Facebook-style social networking, and it was also my first experience with anything resembling online dating. She found my profile, I sounded cool to her, and she messaged me.

 

I kept using ICQ for years to communicate with my friends in the MUD and game development communities before other services took over in the 2000s. I probably held on longer than most. Frankly, I miss that "uh oh!" messaging sound. It was an odd choice, but for me, it's iconic.

 

ICQ user 1065302 here—I just missed scoring a six-digit number when I signed up in the summer of 1997, at the behest of a fellow online traveler whom I met while playing the OG version of Diablo on Battle.Net. We were looking for a way to coordinate out-of-character role-playing chat while smashing monsters, and our previous tool—an application called PowWow, wasn't cutting it. ICQ worked great, and it became the thing to use.

 

Summer of 1997 was a wild and limitless time, wherein I filled hours and earned cash by working at the friendly neighborhood Babbage's. Also working at the store was the person who would go on to become my wife, and when we weren't smooching at work, ICQ became a way to sneak romantic chats back and forth to each other on the family computers at our respective houses.

 

Most of my memories of the last few years of the 90s aren't of the events themselves but of talking about those events on ICQ with my buddies—especially the death of Princess Diana, which I watched unfold in real time on a sweltering August evening, with one eye on the television and the other on multiple ICQ chat windows as my friends and I tried to process what it all meant. (As American teenagers, our comments were glib and probably awful, but I remember watching it happen with the feeling blooming in my gut that this was an important event that I should be paying attention to and that things would change because of it.)

 

I think I stuck with ICQ as my go-to chat app for years until I stopped chatting online altogether. If I were growing up now, Discord would no doubt fill the same role that ICQ did—but I'm glad I grew up in ye olden days and got to play with the tech when the idea of talking to someone was still exciting.

 

What I remember most about ICQ was how much of a new concept it was at the time. The idea that you could see who was connected to the Internet and talk to them at any time outside of services like IRC, MUDs, MUSHes, WorldsAway, or Ultima Online, all of which I used at the time, was very novel. It definitely presaged the IM-style of text messaging on our cell phones we use today, but it was anchored to what was usually a large desktop computer at the time, and the person had to be connected, usually through dial-up. So, that significantly narrowed the pool of people you could connect with through it.

 

When ICQ came out in 1996, my best friend, who was in college at the time, told me to sign up for it. I remember being proud of getting my ICQ ID number. Also, the ICQ sound effects were cool. I also remember using it to keep up with a few friends I met on Ultima Online around 1997–99 so we could plan visits to dungeons together. Other than that, I never kept up with more than about five people through it. It definitely led the way for future instant messaging services like AOL Instant Messanger, which I used very heavily years later.

 

RIP, ICQ; you were a pioneer who will be missed.