Popular Internet Apps of the 90s

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Popular Internet Apps of the 90s

Rohan Naravane, Aug 06, 2010 1745 hrs IST

Apps that were once in the limelight but are now long forgotten

Technology changes at the blink of an eye. Yesterday's popular Internet application is quickly erased from our memories as soon as new and improved ones replace it. Yesterday's Excite or Yahoo search have given way to today's Google. Hi5 or myspace have been replaced by Facebook and Orkut. A lot of you must have gone through transitions like these. That's how it is with Technology; evolution demands for more and more out of a product, and when one fails to deliver, there's always another that makes up for it.

To all those avid Internet lovers from the 90's (and the young ones who weren't exposed to this phenomenon back then), here's a trip down memory lane where we bid adieu to some great apps of those times.

Chat Rooms

Remember going to chat rooms and striking those random conversations with unknown people beginning with an 'a/s/l' (Age/Sex/Location)? The Internet was new back then, and there were only a privileged few among us who were Online. It was exciting to talk to a complete stranger, who, maybe, was from another corner of the globe. Chat rooms got crazier with a long list of people trying to yap at the same time. "Rooms" in chatting were the basic form of categorization. So there were rooms where geeks could discuss technology, dating rooms served as virtual hook-up joints for many singletons hoping for a chance to score (a relationship, you dirty mind). You could PM (Personal Message) anybody, which possibly could have been the first baby steps to what Instant Messaging is today.

I'm not saying people don't use chat rooms anymore, but why are they not as popular as before? I believe there is a change of mindset in people today; they prefer communicating with people they already know online. Instant Messaging and social networking sites became popular for this very reason, so that we could talk to only those we wished to. Also, I feel people think talking to random strangers is fruitless, since there's always the doubt of whether the person on the other end is really who he/she claims to be, or whatever is spoken is the truth.

The 21st century way to meet new people online is more organized compared to joining a chattering room full of people. People subscribing to groups on sites like Facebook learn of common interests in an easier way. Twitter is also another way to have open interactions with new people online.

Internet chatting will probably exist in small form even in the future, but it isn't as hip and happening as it used to be in the 90s.

ICQ

ICQ (I Seek You) was the first instant messaging program released in the November of 1996. It picked up quite a storm back then when people could add anybody to their 'Friend list' and interact via the client software. When you registered with ICQ, you would get a UIN (Unique Identification Number) which you could pass on. I even remember people printing their business cards with ICQ UIN's, much like how some have their BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) numbers posted everywhere these days.

It was a must-have software for anybody with a PC and Internet access. It still has many of the advanced features like PC-to-phone SMS, file transfers, offline messaging and multi-player games that would've made the initial offering of Google Talk look like some kind of undergrad college project.

But why did a major chunk of people move away from ICQ to the now ubiquitous Google Talk or MSN/Yahoo/AIM messenger? My guess is because the latter were portals that provided many more services than just chat. Think about it, you log into your Gmail or Orkut and your Google Talk automatically signs in. So it makes sense to just stick to one provider who caters to all the services you're going to need, instead of having to sign into different service providers every time. And all it takes is a good chunk of the early adopters to make a choice, the rest of the crowd just follows.

Isn't it funny how almost everybody you know happens to be on Gtalk nowadays instead of being a religious user of something like an ICQ or an AIM messenger. And its not like you will persuade everybody you know to talk to you on a certain client, or not talk at all. Personally, I would have never stopped using Orkut if all of my friends had ported to Facebook, but I did.

Instant messaging has now ported to the web. All the above-mentioned chat services now don't require you to have a software installed on the computer. All you need is a browser and an internet connection; any device and any OS would do. Also, companies are taking this cloud thing seriously. Google Talk's new features like video chat, invisible mode and group conversations is available only on the web client. Facebook doesn't even have an official desktop client!