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Comment by RajT88 | Hacker News Reader

First thought: I had assumed ICQ was long dead. It seemed impossible anything from that era could still be running. IRC is of course, through the grace of an ecosystem, but it is a tiny fraction of what it was.

Second thought: how do people randomly connect to talk now? Comments sections mostly? I have long ago stopped seeking new connections of any variety.

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Is IRC a tiny fraction of what it was? As a percentage of internet traffic sure, but has the population of IRC users actually declined?

I’m pretty sure IRC has continued to grow in obscurity, much like Gopher, which, last I checked, was also at an all-time peak and growing steadily but slowly.

The numbers here https://netsplit.de/networks/top100.php are much lower than what I remember from twenty years ago, and the Internet Archive seems to support this: https://web.archive.org/web/20060902133725/http://irc.netspl...

I don't think IRC is one of those technologies whose usage count in absolute terms is at an all-time high today. It wasn't exactly mainstream in the early 2000s, but it still had lots of users.

Thanks, that’s interesting info. I think you might be underestmating this part though:

“Here you see the 100 largest and most popular IRC networks that take part in netsplit.de's comparison, but please consider that there are still some big IRC networks that are out of competition"

Well it's being kept alive in the DoD as "tactical chat" [1]. Although the article is from 2015, watchstanders do still use it today.

[1] https://publicintelligence.net/tactical-chat/

In one of those random connections, I met my wife through ICQ.

Nice. I just remembered my 8 digit login and password and indeed, my wife also had an account back somewhere in 2005-2008. (I brought here there but didn't meet her there though)

The random.connection thing: post comments on Reddit. I'd suggest discord, too, but its not quite the same as ICQ was in terms.of random connections.

ICQ was bought by... uhh Russians? Israelis? Something like that... and was changed several times what it actually is; when I tried it recently, it was just a WhatsApp clone; they even removed all the old ICQ number accounts.

Russians, given the VK app plug in the announcement.

Yes, ICQ was bought by Russians in 2010, and it was already dying at that time.

I'm actually kinda bummed to hear that. I logged in sometime in the past few years and was pleasantly surprised to see my number from the 90s still worked. Moot point now if the whole thing is being shut down anyways, I guess.

While it had it’s troubles and closed recently, omegle was a modern way for people to connect randomly.

That's for sure.

> how do people randomly connect to talk now?

Just getting online used to place you in a small enough pool that making connections was easy -- the fact that you were online in the first place gave you something in common.

Any single online platform has far too many users (and spammers, bots, trolls, grifters, etc.) to make it a good place to meet friends.

Maybe IRC would be a good idea.

This new (and to be euthanised) ICQ isn't the one with the numeric username. Out of curiosity I did (re-)register a few years ago, IIRC it used the user's phone number as the username.

I am still able to log in with my UIN and it has my contact list from several lifetimes ago. Even some online contacts.

discord servers

I hate those so much...

"servers"

I don't think anybody actually cares, but I resent discord for this terminology.

I hate it as well, mostly for the fact that people don't understand how Matrix is decentralized. They think "join matrix.org and create a space" as the same as "creating their own server".

Life is hard.

Most of us do, I think. Then again, what would you label them as? A space? A domain?

Yahoo called them "groups".

Room.

In the API they're referred to as a `guild`

there is an entire generation conditioned to call any group chat or instance a “server” and the pedant in me absolutely wants to scream every time I hear it

I believe the origin, however, was to help it clearly and directly compete with teamspeak or mumble at the time it launched. You would actually have to invest in some sort of hosted server for your group, so the name made sense as a way to help people visualize how discord worked. It’s definitely a relic at this point though.

Relic isn't the word. They've changed/expanded the meaning of the term.

If we’re doing pedantry Olympics then the definition of server:

“a computer or computer program which manages access to a centralized resource or service in a network”

Seems like it could apply to a discord group. The centralized resource being chat data.

Now you know how my dad feels about the terms "engineer" and "software architect" being used for software developers.

I was under the impression that ICQ turned off when AIM did.,

Nope. AOL sold it off in 2010.

https://techcrunch.com/2010/04/28/aol-sells-instant-messagin...

I met one of my best friends randomly on Reddit, so there.

Whatsapp in non US world

WhatsApp is European much more than it is American. Most Americans are just using SMS like cave people.

The comment you replied to is more accurate, as WhatsApp is huge in multiple continents not just in Europe (just not as big in North America as you both point out). For example it's big in South America (and I think Central America too?)

Asia too. Australia too. So again it's the Fahrenheit users being different...

Edit: I looked it up, maybe not Australia...

"Asia too"

Hmm. China? No -- WeChat. Japan? No -- Line. Korea? No -- KaoKao.

Your logic is missing a couple steps.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/whatsapp-...

WhatsApp and FB Messenger are equally popular in Australia.

I'd pre pandemic FB Messenger was definitely more popular but there's been a gradual but noticible shift to WhatsApp since.

I thought in India too, used for payments or something? I remember it's used widely in many places

Yes - I think if you pick a country at random it's more likely to have WhatsApp high on the list of communication tools than not, albeit with some of the biggest countries like China also joining the US in being exceptions).

How much of that due to sms historically being free in the US but cost per-message elsewhere?

That’s definitely the main reason.

It’s also why, briefly, (2008-2010 ish I believe) blackberry phones were the ones kids wanted because they could use blackberry messaging for free without using up their sms credits.

WhatsApp is bundled/zero-rated with cellphones, or cellular network access, if I understand the billboards in South America correctly.

Nope. We use iMessage because we can afford iPhones.

In Europe even iPhone users will preferentially use WhatsApp in my experience.

I have exactly one contact who prefers iMessage over WhatsApp or Signal. The majority use WhatsApp, with Signal being a growing second.

Telegram comes in third place - but mostly that’s used for following “feeds”

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