It was the late 90s, social media platforms like Facebook didn't yet exist, texting was in its infancy, email was very popular, instant messaging was up for...

The bottom of the article links to the history (individual features) of other IM programs from that era as well like ICQ and Yahoo Messenger.

  • Crunk@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    8 hours ago

    well, the same as the others really: Time.

    I think once SMS and phone apps became the norm over having Messenger apps on our Desktops all the time, that was pretty much it for these applications over all. It was a long, slow death. But MSN was one of the firsts to call it quits if I recall right. Oddly the IM app I liked the most. It’s just not many of my friends used it. They were all AIM/AOL users.

    • fahfahfahfah@lemmy.billiam.netEnglish
      20·
      8 hours ago

      The one thing these messengers had over texts was presence notifications. I remember jumping through hoops to get aim working on my Motorola v188 so that I could be notified every time my crush came online and I could send her a “hey what’s going on”… only for it to be ignored.

    • wise_pancake@lemmy.caEnglish
      9·
      8 hours ago

      I miss Adium, I used it for a bunch of protocols, and I customized the CSS/html to make it look really awesome.

      I had an app called snakeskin or something to skin my Mac OS X to be dark themed.