Internet Messengers I've used til 2011

Don't know why but I was just reminded of the early days of the internet where people used to chat around using IRC. Yes, back in around 1995 I used to be on IRC (I think I was about 10 years old back then). I still remember my fav. channel #music for some reason. Maybe because there's a lot more people in there. It is also during this time where I learned multiple IRC commands and whatnots for me to download manga over IRC (way before there were manga readers and when these scanslators do not have the websites to host files/ internet was too slow to load page after page).

A few years after 1995~ I'm guessing around 1997~1999, there was ICQ.

Back then this was the facebook chat many use today. It has some similarities such as being able to send/receive messages ONLY when the user is online. Though for ICQ, after a few versions later they allowed offline messages. Truely an awesome feature IMO. Though, one of the most memorable thing about ICQ are the sounds which can be heard from the vid above. I couldn't find any regular video showcasing the sounds but if you've used ICQ frequently back in the day, you'll recognize most of the sounds used.

Moving on from ICQ, I had myself a Yahoo! account and was using it frequently. I can't really recall at the moment why I used it. Vaguely remembered playing a whole bunch of chess games on it (nope, not Yahoo pool as I wasn't introduced to it back then). I believe this was during the years 1999~2000. Even downloaded the Yahoo!Messenger but since I only used it for a short period of time, I couldn't really remember much about it other than the plethora of emoticons in the messenger.

Around 2000, having already gotten myself a hotmail account back in 1998~2000, I started using MSN Messenger (now called MSN Live Messenger/Live Messenger) even until this day. Don't really have much to say about this...I've been through a couple of phases of using this messenger such as the emoticon spamming, nudge spamming, custom emoticon spamming and even profile picture stealing. Now it seems that I'm hardly using it since most of the time I'll be on facebook but I would still prefer chatting on msn and often redirect my friends to chat over there.

2007 The year I joined facebook. I don't think back then facebook had facebook chat just yet. Probably around 2009 if I'm not mistaken. From what I've heard, many have abandoned the dedicated messengers and opted instead to chat through facebook/twitter. I've seen friends chatting over a facebook status update with total comments (chat log?) reaching up to 60 comments of just chit chatting. Well... I guess that's one way to go about messaging someone on facebook who isn't online.

Future? I'm not too sure. I'm predicting that facebook will soon dominate the internet chatting market since there was some news about Facebook buying over Skype. Facebook + Skype? Who knows what this would do...

Notable mentions :

Trillian

Used this once since I had to combine my MSN and Yahoo! messenger contacts. Gave up using it for about a month or so since I hated the interface and a lot of features from the MSN messenger/Yahoo! Messenger was not implemented in the program. As far as I can remember, it only sends/receives messages (no fancy custom emoticons) and it does not support offline messages (which was important for me back then).

Skype

Most people used to use Skype for internet calls... but recently I found out that there are a lot of my friends who uses it to message others. Usually my Skype wouldn't be on but recently I found myself keeping it on... Still hardly use it for messaging though there are occasional instances since some of my friends had moved to it.