Thoughts

Whatever happened to the good old days when people you knew were still on ICQ? For whatever reason, I have never adopted the heartwarming feelings for AIM that I have for ICQ. ICQ set the standard for stand alone chat clients and gets no recognition for it. The problem is that so many people subscribed to AOL and then ported their screnname(s) to AIM that ICQ just got crowded out. It was never about AIM bring a better chat client, it was simply the one that the most people used, therefore the one that is now synonymous with real time online chat. I long for days gone by when people I new still used ICQ and I could hear "Uh oh" when I had messages or those got awful typewriter sounds as I typed my replies.

I do not even know if ICQ v. 4 (current version) is anything like it was, or if it has been commercialized by parent company AOL. I would hope that they have been able to maintain the quality as their functionality was bought and mimicked in AIM.

I'm looking for friends on ICQ so I have a reason to put down the AIM!