ICQ
72 likes
ICQ is one of the oldest instant messengers. First developed by the Israeli company Mirabilis, sold to AOL, sold again and currenly owned by the Russian "mail.ru" group (known for one of the largest social networks).
License model
- Free • Proprietary
Application types
Country of Origin
Russia
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Online
- Android
- iPhone
- Android Tablet
- iPad
Discontinued
ICQ will stop working from June 26, 2024.
Features
ICQ News & Activities
Highlights All activities
Recent News
- Maoholguin published news article about ICQ
ICQ is shutting down its instant messaging platform on June 26, after nearly three decadesICQ, one of the first instant messaging clients, will shut down on June 26, as announced on its web...
Recent activities
No activities found.
What is ICQ?
ICQ information
Developed by
Mail.Ru Licensing
Proprietary and Free product.Rating
Average rating of 4Alternatives
102 alternatives listedSupported Languages
AlternativeTo Category
Social & CommunicationsApple AppStore
- Updated Mar 21, 2023
- 4.69 avg rating
Comments and Reviews
It is easy to find users in chat rooms. I found some good girls.
Hmmm - it asks for me to enter my country code and phone number, then returns a red message saying "Perhaps you are entering a city phone number" No explanation of what it means, what alternatives there are, or how to proceed.
I can only assume that only people with moblie phone accounts are allowed to sign up.
[Edited by martinjohn1, August 25]
[Edited by martinjohn1, August 25]
The website no longer functions
One Question : Is this program libre / Open Source?
According to the website https://icq.com/linux/en
"This software is available under Apache Public License 2.0 license
Source code is available on GitHub"
Rate : I used to be a regular user, now, very rarely, but it may change.
i don't know the technical, but ... what i really liked ICQ for was being able to split the screen and see the message the other person was composing as they were typing it. you could see the letters being typed, so there was no "drag time" in waiting for them to type, then they press send, they you see it, then you read it, they you type your response, etc. seeing them heading down a certain path with the conversation, you could jump in and say, "no, i didn't mean that" right away and it really sped up the whole chat thing.
is there a program ... a "good", not bloated, susceptible to spambots program that does that? so each of us chatting can see what the other is saying right as it's being keyed in? i would love to find something safe / fast / clean / efficient that did that (like ICQ used to do).
thanks much
massagesGR has a REALLY important point, this actually CANNOT be emphasized enough. The addictiveness of social media is now fairly common knowledge (and the fact that it's by DESIGN) but people are still naive enough to think it's how you use it, they are all but completely unaware of the kind of impact it has on them.
The importance of seeing people type the messages is it is in REAL TIME, and there's a natural flow to it. When you send a completed message, even short ones people are prone to make assumptions about how to interpret that, assumptions they don't even know are assumptions - they just take it as fact and make a judgement based on that. Attention span being what it is even the person writing it may lose track and get distracted by their response, especially if it gets emotional and conflict ensues.
Using this kind of real time flow can go a long way, but unfortunately I'm afraid people are so conditioned by the current style of instant messaging that they will not bother to implement this anymore. And plenty of people will have never used it so they don't know what you're talking about, and just ignore it and move on to the next thing.
If anyone out there knows of this feature ANYWHERE, PLEASE chime in. There is WAY too much naive users just following what's given them out there and they have NO idea how their mind has been conditioned in a basic way.
[Edited by kramyugtaht, October 28]
A bit more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_text#Real-time_text_protocols "While standard instant messaging is not real-time text (the message is only sent at the end of a thought, not while it is being composed), a real-time text option is found in some instant messaging software, including AOL Instant Messenger's "Real-Time IM"[4] feature."
The bad news: https://www.ghacks.net/2017/10/07/aim-shutdown-aol-instant-messenger-alternatives/
"AOL announced yesterday that it will shut down the company's messaging service AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) on December 15th, 2017."
ICQ used to be a decent IM client/service. Then it became bloated and extremely prone to spambots.