Tag: ICQ

To remain an Instant Message client user in this day and age is odd. It would seem a bulk of long-time Internet users are mobile users now, utilizing on-the-move means of contact made possible by social network. Facebook Messenger is popular just by being there and the mass of friend connections that are out there. Google Talk is used because of Google’s own broad reach through contact mediums (not counting Google+ which may be five years old as well as a dead vessel when it comes to personal interaction through the medium). Two major Internet brands lead the way on instant communication, while some age-old mediums are still accessible (AOL IM and ICQ) it just seems more common for old friends to stick around on those while new friends / reconnecting old friends are doing it through the aforementioned Facebook or GTalk.

And then there’s Yahoo….

Yahoo got my attention in a broad social fashion in the early 00s – heck, it may have been ’99, I forget – with chat room functionality, personal profile and email. For years it was the definition of relevant because there were numerous alternatives but not of quality while the Yahoo brand was at the top of the ‘Net. Yahoo Profiles preceded modern social media profile (MySpace and then Facebook) with ability to truly socially interact by way of Yahoo Messenger.  Your user name on Yahoo gave you access to that or Yahoo Mail for that matter.

Yet here we are now and it’s a dead zone. Yahoo will be ending the traditional, desktop version of Yahoo Messenger in early August. The means I use to access it, the Trillian IM client, will no longer have access… And it actually has long seemed access lacking, to be honest. That’s not on Trillian, that’s on Yahoo Messenger use. People have migrated away from Yahoo Messenger for one reason or another with the passing of time. In fact, this irrelevance goes further by way of Yahoo Mail. The mail application remains open and all that but with the passing of time, my own use of a Yahoo account (and my friends) have graduated to either Gmail or personal domain names and accounts tied to them.

You’ll still e able to access Yahoo Messenger, but with limited means to do so it will be ending the services relevance to many, including myself.

I’m likely going to explore deleting my long-held Yahoo account and perhaps that might be the secure thing to do for those out there that have ancient (and still accessible) accounts with them. For a guy going by “Johnny Fonts” as a nickname in this day and age, my old screen name “artfuldodger9” (and the bells and whistles at Yahoo that I used to access through it) has lost all relevance socially and in functionality.