Users were issued a unique User Identification Number, or UIN, upon registration. ICQ offered a number of innovative features including multi-user chat, async offline messaging, resumable file transfers and a searchable directory. Incredibly enough, ICQ has also outlasted its chief competitors: AIM shut down at the end of 2017, Yahoo's communications program bit the bullet in mid-2018 and Microsoft laid its Messenger client to rest in 2014. Launched after less than two months of development from Israeli company Mirabilis, it predated and influenced many of the popular chat programs of the era including AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger. Microsoft's trailblazing Windows 95 was barely a year old, Nintendo had just introduced the N64, and those with a reason to have a cell phone actually used it to talk on. By default, ICQ lets others know that you're online, too, but you can make yourself invisible to others or tell ICQ to accept messages only from users you specify.ICQ, short for the phrase 'I Seek You,' laid the groundwork for standalone instant messaging clients when it arrived in November 1996.

ICQ's directory lets you search for registered users by name or e-mail address and the program will tell you whether they're online. By clicking on any user's name, you can send him an instant message that will pop up on his screen, request a chat session, transfer a file or send e-mail.

Once you're logged on and ICQ is running, it displays a list of users you've selected. But you don't have to provide the information, and with the privacy issues that have been raised around the Internet in recent months, you may want to be careful about this.

This has been a major part of ICQ's success - it gives users the opportunity to find others with similar interests. ICQ will also ask questions about your location, occupation and interests, which it uses as part of its extensive directory service.

When you install ICQ for the first time, you'll be asked to register with ICQ's chat server, using your e-mail address as an identifier.

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