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.
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.
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.
Support matrix!! It already has international support, just needs to be a bit better with stickers and qol stuff. I’ve been using it for years. It’s nice to know I don’t have to worry about my privacy at all with chat rooms that can continue on without the original server.
It was promoted to me as a contender for Slack / IRC, not for the kind of direct messaging app that ICQ / MSN messenger was.
I wouldn’t say jabber is dead, xmpp is still pretty well used. Not enough IMO, but still in use and with readily available modern servers. Jitsi is xmpp+jingle (sip signalling) after all.
Have you tried Matrix?
I think the article mentions it. AOL tried to block it and this to and fro went 21 times before finally coming to a stop. MSN and Yahoo later signed a deal, I think, so that the former will work with latter’s contacts properly.
Trillian was definitely part of that war. I remember the daily patches to get things working again.
I used that until they pay walled it. Then I found Pidgen I believe it was called. It was open source and could connect to pretty much every messenger and IRC and stuff. Then my friend just switched to texting lol