>I don't know of anyone personally who still uses it.
I always liked ICQ, but there was always a tad bit of friction remembering huge strings of numbers as practical IDs, and the naming schemes came way later.
11984431 or whatever doesn't roll off the tongue very well.
It was widely popular in Russia perhaps because '11984431' rolls off the tongue much better than explaining a string of latin characters like "s like dollar sign, not like the Russian s".
When I would reserve a book at the public library, I'd get an automated phone call when the book arrived. The phone call always began by listing off my library card number.
So I know my first library card number was 1000102772901. I had to replace the card a few times, getting new numbers, but I only ever remembered the first one.
As do i. 32939464 probably haven't touched it in near 20 years ( guessing about 18 ). And whilst nostalgia is great, it would be great to free up memory sections of the brain like this :)
That's funny! I tried to remember it and typed what came to mind first into gmail and I got a hit from an archived GoogleTalk session from 2006. Layers upon layers of computer archeology.
72873246. Can’t remember my other number (same length, also starting with 7) but I have saved it somewhere. It was the main messenger in Germany when I grew up.
It’s really not harder than remembering a phone number, and back then, I used it more often.
On the topic of New ICQ, it looks like all those other multi-user messengers. I wish everyone would switch to Jabber were there are clients for people who don’t have group messaging as their primary use case.
I always liked ICQ, but there was always a tad bit of friction remembering huge strings of numbers as practical IDs, and the naming schemes came way later.
11984431 or whatever doesn't roll off the tongue very well.