[ButlerianJihad]

In 1995, I had an AIM screen name, an ICQ UIN, a Jabber thing, which we began consolidating in Pidgin, and my girlfriend was experimenting with Cu-SeeMe and some kind of “microblog” twit thing.

You could also reach us by knowing our character names on certain MUDs, which implemented a spectrum of “real time IM” to “leave a message with the bot” to “virtual room full of mailboxes which are also rooms and contain objects that are notes”.

I didn’t really use IRC, but everyone else did.