Old School Media

My lecturer showed us a rather funny short video about how people discovered an old online community. They talked about it just like archaeologists and explained how amazing such a discovery is; hoping that no one will ever change the websites so that they could find out more about the communication between the people who were involved in this social network.

When I think about old social networks or media I vaguely remember using ICQ to chat to my friends. Back in the day I thought it was amazing how it let me put up a little profile, including uploading a picture and writing about my interests. I could also send my offline friends a message and know that they'll receive it next time they logged on. ICQ was pretty much the social network I used for my overseas friends who did not have a MSN account. So when my lecturer asked me to research an old online community I just had to choose good old ICQ.

An article by Ayelet Noff explained that ICQ, which is now owned by AOL was originally created in 1996. So it has been nearly 15 years ago when this social network was the 'it' thing to use for instant messaging and communicating with friends. When I read further into this article I was surprised to find out that first of all ICQ is still a running internet community; and secondly it's trying to make a comeback by competing with Facebook and Twitter. There are several links where you can even become a fan of this article on Facebook!

So ICQ's savior from becoming an extinct social network is the new ICQ 7! According to Ayalet Noff this software is an 'all-in-one social network tool', which allows you to view updates and other social activities from your friends across all networks. ICQ 7 also features additional tools, including status updates, friend's feeds, contact lists, user's profile, pictures and videos from Flickr and YouTube, as well as updates from MySpace.

Personally I have to say "good on 'em" by attempting to take on the fastest growing social network, known as Facebook. However as this software was released a year ago, today and I have never come across ICQ 7, let alone heard of it, I need to say that ICQ 7 is an EPIC FAIL!