What I truly miss is the short era, when it looked like Jabber is going to win the chat world. At least here in Europe, ICQ was on its way out. Both Google and Facebook had interoperable XMPP servers. It ended very shortly after that, but it was good for the year or two while it lasted.
tracker1 1 hours ago [-]
I was just talking about this the other day... it was nearly a panacea of interconnected, interoperable messengers. My memory shortened it to a few months, but I remember it pretty well. The protocol sucked, but it did work.
I really miss the group chats on Yahoo that included voice. X spaces is close-ish, and I know that discord and others have similar features... just feels a lot less connected.
singpolyma3 28 minutes ago [-]
Facebook never had an interoperable server. They operated a limited functionality gateway to allow using your own client, but it never worked well and never federated.
WorldMaker 3 hours ago [-]
Since Champions Online, Cryptic Studio's game chat server used to be Jabber compatible, too. I don't know if it still is, I haven't had a Jabber client running in a while. It might still be.
There was something really cool about getting MMO Guild chat (or Fleet chat in my case as a big Star Trek Online player at the time) in your normal IM client.
That was also about when we discovered the server would let you create channels that would be global across all the games (and any IM clients). I still tend to refer to Champions Online and (Cryptic's) NeverWinter Online as "Holodeck Adventures" for that reason, because I'd commonly play those in the days of my very active STO Fleet until people started chatting about STO in the global fleet chat.
tomschwiha 4 hours ago [-]
For me it was xfire/icq => msn/skype => teamspeak 2/3 (short mumble) => discord
fishgoesblub 2 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately, the dev refuses to opensource this and the Escargot rewrite. There's a FOSS AIM server[1], and apparently it supports ICQ, which is new from the last I saw it.
Yeah very annoying. They ask for donations constantly but are enjoying keeping everything for themselves.
benguild 7 hours ago [-]
the sad thing about this is what made it magical before was the people that were on there, and it’s impossible to get that back now!
thedanbob 7 hours ago [-]
Yup, they can probably rebuild ICQ the way it was when I was 16 but they can't make me 16 again.
btucker 4 hours ago [-]
Also, it was a time when being “online” was an active state. Now we’re “online” passively 24/7.
sylens 1 hours ago [-]
Yes, this is it. "Logging on" and "Logging off" were explicit actions that you took as part of your day, instead of just being perpetually connected and reachable.
5- 5 hours ago [-]
what made it magical was us being younger. likewise, it's very likely impossible to get that back.
endre 7 hours ago [-]
same with IRC except IRC never went down.
mmmlinux 1 hours ago [-]
no but apparently you can have some kind of coup on one of the most popular servers and cause a huge dent in it...
Bluestein 6 hours ago [-]
... and never will :)
Spaceships bearing our genes will still beam IRC from somewhere down deep in engineering.-
stevenAthompson 2 hours ago [-]
What would be the purpose of launching a decaying lump of monkey meat into space when the AI can explore just as well with a tiny fraction of the mass requirements?
I'd wager that it will be AI's using IRC from space, but IPv6 still won't have replaced IPv4. :)
Bluestein 2 hours ago [-]
> wager that it will be AI's using IRC from space, but IPv6 still won't have replaced IPv4. :)
You are indeed totally correct on all points!
(But IRC it will be :)
anthk 5 hours ago [-]
Ditto with Usenet albeit there's always cool people there.
ocdtrekkie 3 hours ago [-]
The invitation to join the project's Discord is magical. That's... where all your friends are now anyways.
marcodiego 1 hours ago [-]
> We're working to primarily rebuild the original AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), AOL Desktop, Yahoo and ICQ platforms as close to the originals as possible, and document the entire thing.
Why not contribute to one of many FLOSS implementations that were once maintained?
iforgotpassword 6 hours ago [-]
Cool project, kudos to the devs, even though (as other comments say) it seems rather pointless. Some things better stay in the past while you enjoy the nostalgia once in a honeymoon.
bastardoperator 1 hours ago [-]
Unless they bring back personal filing cabinet, AOL will remain dead. I attribute the entire death of AOL to the death of cerver and mp3z
Or Bitlbee, but no. Here there are reimplementing the server side of the protocol.
AIM, MSN and ICQ are reimplemented in a form that even legacy patched clients should work as they came minus the server URL patch.
musicale 3 hours ago [-]
What is the story for security/encryption to exist in a modern threat landscape? I expect with server-based systems you could have an encrypted tunnel to the server and just connect to a local proxy, or ??
deadbabe 23 minutes ago [-]
Someday someone will do a project like this but for Discord.
ljlolel 2 hours ago [-]
Hangout.fm is like AOL chat rooms with music
nickdothutton 3 hours ago [-]
Create the Internet you want to see.
icedchai 4 hours ago [-]
I loved the original AIM. I remember using it from roughly 1999 to when it was finally deprecated in 2017. Almost 20 years!
Here you would try to reuse your old computer (usually 15-20 years old) for common tasks done in 2025. The web it's a no-no minus a few services but you would surprised. Hint: yt-dlp+mpv set to 480p and below, Retrozilla+ a TLS hack in about:config, fake User Agents (PSP, Opera Mini...), https://legacyupdate.net with a Gemini client and gemini://gemi.dev with the News Waffle proxy, RSS news delivered from Usenet with GMANE... there are tons of hacks.
Patching the old clients it's often usually easy, even more in case of AMSN (TCL). It's a matter of changing the URL of the service and maybe some slight API change.
Escargot covers the MSN services, which is similar to NINA:
Other side of the equation. Trillian was an unofficial client, this seems to be a group running a series of unofficial servers that can be used with the original clients, and presumably also contemporary unofficial clients.
I'm also aware of the P3OL project which supports AOL 2.x and 3.x clients.
I really miss the group chats on Yahoo that included voice. X spaces is close-ish, and I know that discord and others have similar features... just feels a lot less connected.
There was something really cool about getting MMO Guild chat (or Fleet chat in my case as a big Star Trek Online player at the time) in your normal IM client.
That was also about when we discovered the server would let you create channels that would be global across all the games (and any IM clients). I still tend to refer to Champions Online and (Cryptic's) NeverWinter Online as "Holodeck Adventures" for that reason, because I'd commonly play those in the days of my very active STO Fleet until people started chatting about STO in the global fleet chat.
[1] https://github.com/mk6i/retro-aim-server
Spaceships bearing our genes will still beam IRC from somewhere down deep in engineering.-
I'd wager that it will be AI's using IRC from space, but IPv6 still won't have replaced IPv4. :)
You are indeed totally correct on all points!
(But IRC it will be :)
Why not contribute to one of many FLOSS implementations that were once maintained?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent_QQ
https://adium.im/
https://pidgin.im/
AIM, MSN and ICQ are reimplemented in a form that even legacy patched clients should work as they came minus the server URL patch.
https://occ.deadnet.se
Here you would try to reuse your old computer (usually 15-20 years old) for common tasks done in 2025. The web it's a no-no minus a few services but you would surprised. Hint: yt-dlp+mpv set to 480p and below, Retrozilla+ a TLS hack in about:config, fake User Agents (PSP, Opera Mini...), https://legacyupdate.net with a Gemini client and gemini://gemi.dev with the News Waffle proxy, RSS news delivered from Usenet with GMANE... there are tons of hacks.
Patching the old clients it's often usually easy, even more in case of AMSN (TCL). It's a matter of changing the URL of the service and maybe some slight API change.
Escargot covers the MSN services, which is similar to NINA:
https://escargot.chat/
> Yahoo! Messenger support is publicly available and interoperates with our Escargot network.
An example for Escargot (MSN):
https://codeberg.org/transgirlphoebe/msn-pecan/commit/2bac1e...
Repo: https://codeberg.org/transgirlphoebe/msn-pecan
I'm also aware of the P3OL project which supports AOL 2.x and 3.x clients.