Outside of Eastern Europe, ICQ has been dead for a long time. Oddly enough I’ve kept most of my save data active enough on it for them to not have deleted my account from junior high. It’s an ICQ vintage number, 7 digits, which is coveted in the world of current users and even has a dollar value estimated to it in the realm of ICQ prestige.
But beyond that bubble of obsessive ICQ junkies, the brand slowly died off in the early 00′s to most of the world with the uprising of AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN messenger. However, the times they are a changin’ (or at least trying to) and ICQ is pushing ahead with a relaunch campaign.
The ICQ of 1996 is no more, now it’s a hub of facebook, flickr and twitter connectivity, streaming in news feeds, photo updates and tweets in the user panel. This partially saddens me because I miss the old simplicity of ICQ, granted the internet of 1996 was built on simplicity, and maybe nostalgia is holding me back a little.
However, with nostalgia in mind, I willingly downloaded the new ICQ 7 just for fun, typed in my old memorized number and it was almost like opening a time capsule. All this aside, I have to admit nostalgia is really all ICQ has going for it to try and re-take the internet messaging world. Most people these days use services like Trillian and Pidgn, enabling them to connect multiple chat systems in one interface.
But with ICQ having deleted most of its original users due to inactivity (big mistake I think) I’m not so sure how many people will be willing to come back to a service that’s so essentially old. (Let’s face it, 14 Internet years is like 30 real world years.)
We’ve seen several companies try to resurface and reclaim their glory days, but for the most part they have failed to exist as the same platform they once were.
