[lskopwol]

Probably advent of instant messengers made them feel less lonely, culminating around 2006-2008 when modern social networks really took off, but peaking in today's result of every post on fb/twitch/instagram engendering social anxiety and thus 'loneliness'.

[niftich]

This time was indeed marked by the high popularity and increasing interop between classic IM networks, and the rise new networks. Some choice dates:

- 2005-09: Meebo launches offering web access to AIM, WLM, Yahoo

- 2006-02-07: Google Talk integration inside Gmail goes live

- 2006-03: Nielsen/Netratings survey for active users: AIM 53M, WLM 27M, Yahoo 22M

- 2006-07-12: seamless interop starts between Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger

- 2006-09-26: Facebook opens up to everyone (not just colleges)

- 2007-02-14: Gmail opens up to everyone (not just invite-only)

- 2008-04-06: Facebook chat goes live

- 2008-04-19: Facebook overtakes Myspace in Alexa ranking

- 2008-07-11: iOS App Store launches, AIM for iOS released

- 2008-08-26: Facebook hits 100 million active users

- 2008-09-23: Android 1.0 launches

More (and sources) in my earlier posts [1][2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13465483 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11114518

[Vagantem]

True - I can still hear that MSN "new message" sound echoing in my head..

[bencollier49]

I reckon you're right. This was peak Yahoo Instant Messenger time, and it launched in 1998, just before the graph starts moving downwards.

[cortesoft]

Really? I feel like peak instant messenger time was around 2001 or so... I wonder if it has to do with how old we are?

[gowld]

Peak for you was likely when you were a teen.

But overall? In 2001 computers weren't ubiquitous nor portable. Middle-class kids were on IM on their desktops and maybe laptops for max a few hours per day.

Now kids have phones for IM all day and night.

[cortesoft]

The grandparent comment was saying that 2006-2008 was peak instant messenger, and people using messengers on phones were certainly not common during those years.

[tdurden]

It is a shame YIM is gone now; I lost contact with a lot of people where that was our main form of communication.