Tech News and Updates: Precursor of Chat and SMS ICQ Instant Messaging Celebrates 20th Year

Instant messaging precursor ICQ celebrates its 20^th year. Created by four Israeli high school students in 1996, ICQ instant messaging was the first stand-alone instant messaging application and the first online instant messenger. At the time, chat was still a function of IRC while SMS or text messaging was still an emerging technology.

The ICQ instant messaging name was a reference to "I seek you" which was the way users usually found other users to chat with. The company became Mirabilis, but the product name was retained.

According to Medium, the second version of ICQ instant messaging in 1997 saw the release of client applications for Windows (3.1x, 95 and NT) as well as for the Mac (OS 7). It had reached 5 million users, with 1.3 million daily active users. Compared to today's instant messaging and chat systems, these numbers look paltry. However, at the time, the most common way of getting online was through dial-up access. Broadband was not yet available for consumers.

TechCrunch reported that in 1998, the user base was increasing by one million every three weeks, and this was when AOL bought it for slightly more than $400 million. There were other developments introduced by ICQ instant messaging but it slowly faded to the background without adequate support from AOL. In 2010, ICQ instant messaging was bought by the Mail.Ru Group.

Today's version of ICQ instant messaging supports integration with Mail.Ru, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Gmail, and YouTube, as well as Russian social networks Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki. ICQ instant messaging also has end-to-end encryption for voice and video calling. It was the first instant messenger and VoIP app to do so.

In terms of functionality, the current version of ICQ instant messaging is like Snapchat, Skype, Kik, and Viber and available on desktop and mobile as well as on social media.

ICQ instant messaging has come a long way from its humble beginnings while at the same time it keeps improving with cutting-edge features.