[jfoucher]

" If you want to chat with people, you have to go where they are, and ICQ and AOL have the most people by far. Chances are, your friends are using one of those services, not one of the smaller ones like MSN Instant Messenger. With all of Microsoft's muscle, money, and marketing skill, they are just not going to be able to break into auctions or instant messaging, because the network effects there are so strong. "

Funny to read that in hindsight...

[skore]

Care to elaborate? I still use ICQ and various xmpp accounts, plus skype. Had an MSN account a while back, but only for two friends who ended up switching away from it.

Yes, Microsoft bought skype, but that's not really "breaking into", that's "buying". You wouldn't say that Microsoft "broke into the FPS market by making Halo".

[hello_moto]

All of my friends switched from ICQ to MSN. The switch happened kind of fast too. Especially during the XP and hotmail era. XP comes with windows messenger pre-installed. Not to mentioned the whole Windows Live ID thingie.

[skore]

I think the introduction of Windows/Xbox Live was the driving force that pushed it in the triple digits million userbase here, not an actual decision to switch to MSN. If all of your friends are suddenly on another service, it's no wonder you'll switch eventually.

[niklas_a]

Skype: 880M users MSN: 330M users AOL: 53M users ICQ: 50M users Source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaging

[Macha]

Everyone I see frequently who still uses IM (and not just Facebook) uses MSN, so I guess it's a location thing. I'm in Ireland. (And AOL is out for people that want to talk to non-Americans, probably, as I had to jump through hoops to get a AIM to talk to American friends) .

[skore]

Interesting. I really think it is a huge location thing. Making it somewhat extra-restricted to non-virtual social networking constraints.

[dagw]

Pretty much same here in Sweden. Before everybody jumped to Facebook, they where all on MSN.

[Edootjuh]

It's very location specific. In the Netherlands almost everyone uses Windows Live Messenger, while in Germany (or so I heard) ICQ is still much more common.

Though these days I like to think Facebook is taking over because it kind of consolidates e-mail and IM.

[dextorious]

"""Care to elaborate? I still use ICQ """

So you are that guy!

The parent meant that of course people have had since migrated off of AOL and ICQ.

ICQ is almost nothing today, and even yesterday, before Facebook took over, tons of people had switched to MSN.

Wikipedia gives: MSN 330 million active (June 2009), ICQ 50 million active (Feb 2010). You can do the math.

[skore]

Yes, I think I use ICQ for communication with precisely three people. So I guess I see your point ;-)

[notahacker]

The comment about the effectiveness of AOL's lock-in looks a bit optimistic with the benefit of hindsight too.