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.
I’m surprised no one mentioned Facebook.
I recall using MSN as far as in to 2009, but the friends I was connected with migrated to Facebook when their chat feature rolled out.
The article touches on that
The advent of social media and mobile devices couldn’t be ignored either. These technologies were enabling new ways for people to stay in touch with friends and family that didn’t involve a traditional computer.
Anyone remember the short-lived Great War of the Messenger Apps? For a few months back around… '98? '99? MSN tried really hard to shoehorn its way into working with AIM. About every day there would be an update from MSM Messenger to allow it to work with AIM. Then AOL would fuck with their own protocol to ice out MSN users again.
I think these shenanigans also impacted the Trillium Messenger app too, which up until then had been flying under the radar of messenger interoperability.
I might be getting some of these details wrong.
And then Jabber came to fix it by introducing an open protocol, and Google started supporting it, and all was well. But when everybody was using Google Chat they severed the Jabber compatibility, locking everyone in to their platform. Now we’re back wading around in enshittified shit and Jabber is dead.
Have you tried Matrix?
Trillian was definitely part of that war. I remember the daily patches to get things working again.
I never knew anybody who used it. I had one contact on ICQ. Everybody else used AIM.
I was in highschool in the 2000s in Europe, and msn was our default way of communication with classmates.
Yep, early 2000s in the UK and everyone was using MSN. I didn’t know a single person using AIM or ICQ!
Ditto for us in Australia
Remember when icq could message aim users though? That was so badass.
remember trillian? or pidgin was it called? you could message every service.
that was badass.
Both. Trillian was not Mac only (I made a mistake from memory), Pidgin was multi platform but started on Linux. Pidgin had every protocol. I still keep my .purple config folder and logs after over a decade. Not like I’ll ever read the logs again, though.
Edit: Guys, relax. I made a mistake recounting from memory. I didn’t run Windows back then. I assumed that because of the native Aqua interface, there wasn’t a Windows port.
Trillian was not Mac only. I’ve never owned a Mac and used Trillian almost exclusively from 2002 until roughly 2009?? I can’t remember when the transition from IM to texting happened for me, but it was around then. When I was running Linux at home I would use Gaim, which was developed by a friend of the main Trillian guy.
I remember having Trillian on Windows way back when.
I’ll have you know I did go back and read my logs from like 2008. I think I cringed so hard I never recovered. You might have saved yourself by not looking at yours!
Trillian ran on Windows but was closed source. Pidgin is foss.
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.
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.
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.
Wow, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.
Those were the days. 🥲
Nudge
Wizz
No mentions of XMPP 😒
Thinking in terms of platforms is much easier for the knuckle draggers.
I remember I started using more Skype after it MSN Messenger.
But I’d say it got killed by WhatsApp on mobile phones.
Microsoft happened.
MSN = Microsoft Network. They didn’t “happen”…they were always part of the process. MSN messenger was never anything other than a Microsoft product.
