Most Popular Messengers 1998 - 2022
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- Опубліковано 9 гру 2022
- Updated timeline of the world most popular instant messenger apps starting 1998 to 2022. Including desktop software of the late 80s and early 2000s. Measured by number of monthly active users worldwide. Data source: market reports, press releases, company SEC filings.
As always your feedback is welcome.
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Crazy there is still more Skype users than Discord. I feel like at least 80% of those users are inactive accounts
skype is still commonly used for corporate needs. No one business will use discord for serious meetings
@@Oxigenium1 not really. corporate has moved to teams, meet, and zoom.
@@Oxigenium1 why?
@@atehortuajf Not every company has updated enough to use Teams. A lot of companies still use Skype for Business over Microsoft Teams. Simply because they have yet to update their environment with new operating systems as well. I know a lot of companies that still have their users use Win7 or older on their assets.
@@ToeKnee616Heck, my nearby pharmacy still uses Windows 2000
I feel like there's a fundamental difference between the golden days of instant messagers like AOL and yahoo and the modern phone apps that are more like texting. There was something unique about logging in to AIM specifically to have conversations with your friends vs being a part of something you carry around all day and send messages asynchronously.
Things like mirc and discord aren’t comparable to the the likes of WhatsApp either, they’re an instant forms of forums.
yeah i really miss AIM. away messages need to come back. like i miss being able to see someone with an away flag and a message why the flag is there and if i try to message them it'll just go through silently and they won't get notified until they are back other than they have messages. like imessage has the ability to silent notifications for a period of time while you are away and auto respond like AIM, but it won't let people know ahead of time that you are away (only that notifications are silence, which some people always have on).
@@CreativeMindsAudio I forgot about those. They would be so helpful to return!
i think it was because it was not 24/7, you needed to log on at the same time to have a conversaion and people used to wait for there friends etc and cooperate times, and now there is no logging off so you never really have the same conversations
It was like a virtual school lunch table.
Tencent QQ: I was the most popular messaging client of the early 2000s
Everyone: I don't even know who you are.
It's a china thing
China population self sustain their app usage popularity
And social credits down the drain
@@TheBrandonn Wow. Now it makes sense...
[Edit] It should be read: "Tencent QQ: I was the most ONLY popular messaging client of the early 2000s"
The whole eastern side of the planet used it.
I really miss ICQ. It was such a unique messenger and the very first one I used.
Oh yes. I remember my mother asking me what that squeaking animal in my room was.
ICQ 2000 had a couple of features which no modern messenger has. You could create a quite complex profile with lots of parameters like hobbies, interests, favorite sports and so on and then search for other people with similar interests. All of that in a native Windows program that didn't look awful.
@@MetalheadAndNerd 😅
@@MetalheadAndNerd I just remember the _'uh oh'_ sound every time you got a new message. lol
I still remember my ICQ number. But haven't logged in in almost 20 years. :D
i'm so happy for Telegram's popularity. The quality of this product is so insanely good (especially comparing to all the other messengers) it really should be the top 1 eventually
Completely agree
In Germany Telegram is mostly used by conspiracy theorists so if someone says they use Telegram you better get out while you can
Signal is better, there are no Nazis
Tell me one thing Telegram is better at than Whatsapp ? It even sells user data. That's why even Elon Musk said to stay away and to use "Signal" instead.
@@frankoptis you can’t be serious
That "Boom" in 2002 Q1 for MSN Messenger was due to Windows XP being introduced, and it had MSN bundled with it!
Every big boost or loose in something was due to something happening at this moment. Perhaps this would be another addition to this statistics: What happened at this moent, that this skip in popularity posssibly happened.
Umm no not really, Skype is bundled by windows 8 & 10 (not sure about 11) & ever since it lost it's popularity, it hasn't really boomed that much despite it trying
The only reason MSN boosted was because it was heavily advertised, but also at that time, most of the im programs didn't come up with many features, & most of them were not much user friendly, unlike MSN, msn was the easiest to use & it was packed with features, which made people want to use it
Not surprising because I still remember most young people using AOL instant messenger at that time.
In my opinion Telegram is a very great choice.
It's so strange for me that every thing that they update and change is better than before. this is never the case in any other companies for me.
Telegram blew my mind when it came out
Telegram is a ultimate messaging app. In all aspects.
Telegram is comunists and pedos paradise
Yea but did they get rid of the phone number requirement yet? Otherwise who cares
@@TheBrandonn yeah they did
I'm so happy this channel came back!!!
I loved MSN Messenger in 2002. It really took off in that time by the looks of this video. I would talk to people on MSN Chatrooms and then if we got on well enough, we would talk on MSN Messenger. Totally platonic , mind you! I was only 10 in 2002. I never entertained any of the sleazy ones. Just the normal ones who weren’t bothered about ASL (age, sex, location)! And I liked how MSN would greet me by name when I logged in.
What the hell happened in Q1 2006? Did MSN Messenger go bust?! NVM, I see Windows Live Messenger took over. Very sad. My heart will always be with MSN messenger.😢
Ah asl, so far into technological history that my phone tries to autocorrect it to "asleep" lol. Those were good times.
Yeah, I think MSN Messenger had better functionality than WLM or anything since..
@@jd49631 I think MSN and WLM was the same thing, just an upgraded version.
I always thought me and my friends used to use MSN all the time until like 2008 and now I see it was actually WLM, since I started to use the internet for the first time ever in 2005. Imo WLM was the best!
@@jd49631 MSN messenger became Windows live messenger. Then microsoft killed Windows live for Skype. (And ive lost half of my contacts in the process, thanks Microsoft...)
Black berry messenger stayed up there more than I expected. I thought they died out when WhatsApp came along.
It died because Blackberry took too long to open the app for other phone manufacturers. Whatsapp took advantage of this.
Yet again I am reminded of how much I've been living under a rock as I discover the existence of Tencent QQ - which I'd never heard of before even though it dominated for such a long time before whatsapp took over... Also I expected to see Slack in the last few years, much more widely used in my professional circles than either Skype or Discord.
you are not living under one. just on a different rock. QQ is mainly used in China and not internationally.
Believe it or not, there is an entire world out there aside from USA and the West. Tencent and WeChat are mainly used in China. Even WhatsApp's popularity is mainly from outside the USA. Here in the states WhatsApp is the app we use when we want foreign scammers to contact us haha
Yes I knew about WeChat thanks to Chinese colleagues, but not Tencent. WhatsApp's n°1 position does not surprise me though because I'm European and literally don't know anybody here who doesn't use it. (We moan and complain about the fact that it belongs to the Evil Facebook Empire now, but we still use it...) 😅
QQ's original name is called OICQ... they didn't hide their purpose at the very start: copying ICQ for their own use.
QQ is a social media in China cuz China has the most Internet users in the world
Everyday I still miss MSN. Nothing has ever hit the same.
MSNM / WLM felt so bloated back then.
Maybe what you really miss is your youth
You can still use it with escargot
Looking back, it seems crazy though that you could only message one person at a time (no group chats)
*BUZZ*
im so happy that this channel has started uploading videos again
Still remember the days in which we only had one messenger: the postman 😉
lol
… with a telegram, a real telegram😂
@@vissarion3505 🤯😂😂😂😂 genious!
Telegraph. Real telegraph.
Good old IRC, MSN and Yahoo messenger, What a time to be alive. Kid in the 90s, teen in the y2ks and adult in the 10s.
Memories
I'm glad I didn't unsub from this channel during your absence. Keep them coming!
Deal!
i really like these videos! the song choice really sticks with me as it reminds me of some other things i like :) i appreciate the way the trends pulse with the music, it's cool that you could find this on the audio library. thanks for taking the time to do this!
Glad you enjoy it!
Never change this background music, it is by far the best for your videos and never quite like the others that don't have it lol
Noted!
I'm surprised Trillian didn't have a bigger user base considering it was AIM, MSN, ICQ, and mIRC messengers rolled into one program where you have your friends lists rolled in. It was such a cool app before the "premium" models rolled out. My all time favorite is probably MSN Messenger. Somewhat ahead of its time with video chat, voice chat, and multistreaming along with a great interface. I'm most surprised that Discord isn't dominating yet since it has the best features of all of those with much less useless memory usage.
I assumed it was referring to people using the actual Trillian part of Trillian, and not just using it to connect to a different messaging client. I used Trillian, but only for AIM, Yahoo and MSN. Discord isn't dominating because it's still a niche audience. If I need to contact one specific person, I'm definitely not wasting my time finding them on discord.
I miss it, it was great! Sad it never became more popular
Trillian was marginal because it didn't have a big company behind.
Discord has several cool features, but isn't strictly a messenger app, in fact its chat functionality is very limited and poorly implemented.
@@sovo1212 I totally disagree that Discords chat is poorly implemented. I dunno what you're refering to, since DIscord already has way more features thatn WhatsApp, Skype or similar
@@YamiSuzume It has indeed great potential as messaging app, however its interface for that part is atrocious. The mobile app is particularly bad.
I would guess that Discord has the highest user retention rate given that most people who use it are on it 24/7 haha
True
100% I signed up for the Discord server for a game that isn't even out yet the other day. I stop by the server like once a month just to see if there's any updates and every time I do I recognize at least 2-3 user names posting.......these people must be on there 24/7 and the game is still probably 2 years away from launch and who knows if it'll even be any good lol
Discord uses only gamers who have no friends.
@@r-man3864 You have no friends 💀
@@r-man3864 No need to be so straight forward, you already exposed 2 people
ICQ lives in my heart forever, I met my wife in the late 90's through it. Wouldn't IRC (and its Windows version shown in the video, mIRC) be a chat program (Internet Relay Chat)? I never thought of it as an instant messaging program. I went in a lot to look for rooms where it was possible to download games and music via FTP.
Yes, IRC was mostly a chat experience with direct messaging feature.
Same here. Met my wife on ICQ in '99. She sent me a rando message, which normally I would've ignored, but for some unknown reason I responded and struck up a conversation that we're still having to this day.
@@TheAstrobleme And before my wife, I had several girlfriends through an even older medium, BBSes chats
@@DataIsBeautifulOfficial what program are you using in this video?
24 years past and I'm still remember my UIN: 41xxxx47. 🥰
I'm using top 5 ,7 messenger app but seeing telegram on top 4 makes me happy idk why but ❤️
I use telegram from 2016 and still using it
Telegram its the best of all.
I just figured out you're back!!! We needed you!
Trillian is technically not a messenger. It was a tool that combined multiple messengers into a single platform
It's a messenger lol
@@xXVibrantSnowXx In the old days it was certainly not.
If you want actual end to end encryption, you can't beat Signal. Telegram is a close runner-up.
These videos are amazing. Thank you. And thanks for pausing on the final frame of data
Glad you like them!
IRC has always been a diehard community and was so much more than just a messenger
I was expecting Signal to enter the scene and take huge market share out of WhatsApp once Facebook announced that they were killing E2E encryption on WhatsApp.
Still a long way to go for Signal.
Signal deserves more users
I was surprised about that too. But it seems Signal and Threema are still very regional and small in comparison to WhatsApps market share in countries like India.
How can Signal seems to be safe if you simply cannot hide your phone number there?
@@ITentrepreneur That’s why I never really used it, and promotion by celebrities makes me feel doubtful.
It seems the Facebook scandal hasn't affected Whatsapp, but Telegram rises due to the better privacy policy.
Yes, people are stupid or the boomerlike" It has to be easy and everyone else uses it and I have nothing to hide". Otherwise, Threema and Signal as the most secure and Telegram as most usefull for users with several devices would have climbed much faster und Whatsapp wouldn't be used by anyone.
And whatsapp rises due to it being the better product
And as always, Data is Really Beautiful ❤️
Was part of the mIRC crowd from 2000-2010 or so. Loved those days!
mIRC was popular for chatting, but it was MORE popular for file sharing. Pre-Napster days.
still is
To start 1998 I lived in a high speed line house with tech roommates and visitors. Experimented with all the starting four. ICQ was my fave especially for small file sharing and voice. Used as a communication adjunct playing chess and some early multiplayer games. AOL had a social scene in my Midwest city in chat rooms. Several meetups through AOL. People often had limited time online and made decisions pretty quick.
Thanks for sharing!
Yo! You are back :)
1 minute of silence of the greatest of all: Windows Live Messenger, i miss it
No, MSN messenger came before and that was my favourite place in 2002 when I was 10.
You mean MSN Messenger. I never really got used to the name change. I remember a time in the early 2000s when all my classmates used MSN Messenger. Those were the days...
You can still use it thanks to escargot
Ah, yes, the halcyon days of ICQ. I remember them well...
Iconic Uh Oh!
I wanted to like it, but it didn't work well for me.
OMG the way Windows Live Messenger just shot up to the top real quick...
OMG He's back! :o
Very cool! It would be interesting to see how applications like Microsoft Teams and Slack factor into this as well.
MSN... still miss it, especially the nudge feature lol
Glad that Telegram is still strong.
Russia, Russia, Russia
@@alexanderrevan4478 какое отношение телеграм имеет к россии? Или нужно хоть чем-то гордиться раз уж больше ничего нет?
@@TheSylar113 прямое, и да нужно хоть чем-то гордиться, раз уж больше ничего нет
@@svetica673 телеграмм никогда не был русским продуктом и делали его не россияне. Хотя аудитория на старте действительно было русскоговорящая.
@@lorg0n его создатель русский, ало
Man, I'm missing Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger so hard, and this legendary music made my nostalgic tears easier to flow 🥹
I remember back when I had actual friends now,... just randos
Relatable
Team Telegram ♥️ but I will always miss Windows Live Messenger
Welcome back!
Telegram is cool.
MASSIVE DECLINE of BB Messenger and Emergence of Telegram , 2 BIG EVENTS(Telegram will soon become a Giant in Top 2/3)
P.S. Whatsapp is the simplest of all and that is what maintains its apex position
Wait? You're Back!!!
Oh good old ICQ🙌🏼 (yeah I’m old haha)
People in 2040: whatsup, telegram, what are those?
Incredible video !! Waouh the MSN epoch !!!
I think Skype would've been king evntually if they hadn't taken away so many features and added useless ones that made it less user friendly. Companies need to learn to stop changing things on good programs. It just drives people away to something else.
skype become trash after been bought by microsoft
They did that, just so they hope you would use team, or zoom
in Poland we had gadu-gadu (also known as GG), it was very popular before facebook, everybody had gg here. Did you take those stats into account?
GG jest polskim komunikatorem. Jedynie polacy go uzywaja. Do tego jak widze co sie z GG zrobilo to szkoda gadac. Reklamy, limity. Byle tylko kase zaplacic za premium. Na google sklep ma tylko 5 milionow pobran i ocena 2,6.
I don’t think anyone predicted Skype is still bigger than Discord
Yees happy to have the best channel back
Enjoy!
Interesting. I remember using AOL IM for the first time in June of 1997.
I expected MS Teams to show up there as well, and Skype to fall out of the chart
I loved Yahoo Messenger because I could use colorful text and different font sizes. Apps today don't get it. Where is the 2000s pizzazz and whimsy??
the legend has returned
I love how you can see exactly when smartphones hit the marketplace. The dramatic shift is almost instantaneous, it’s insane
I don't think I've ever really thought about how much of a giant WhatsApp is. Honestly, I expected Snapchat, Discord, Telegram, Facebook Messager, and iMessage to all be at the top. I really didn't think anyone even used Skype or Viber anymore either.
Viber is super popular in Russia,Ukraine and Belarus. Skype is mostly inactive users and companies still relying on it since they don't upgrade software. And well Whatsapp is just kinda universal, everywhere I've been there were people using Whatsapp and I can't say the same for anything else on this list
@@garikek why they don't use telegram over viber tho? is it banned? i don't know the current status of viber but back when it was popular it was trash compared to telegram when it came out.
@@redphantom2670 viber is a go-to app amongst like 90% of people aged 40+. teenagers and yound adults use mostly telegram and local twitter aka Vk. its just what it is
@@redphantom2670 Telegram is a Russian product, so at least that thing can't be banned xD
They are preferring Telegram over Viber, but the old-school parents didn't gone away
Whatsapp sell data, no thanks.
I totally forgot about Trillian. I'm really surprised to see it on here. I'm not sure if I ever knew anyone else who used it. Also in surprised to have never heard of tencent despite it being on top for several years. Based on the icon alone I wonder if it's for Linux
Hello fellow Trillian user :)
The good old times... oh the memories.
tencent is the Chinese company that owns every single fucking IT product in china. With messengers and such they make products that are meant to be used by the Chinese people, so a lot of stuff is banned and removed, but also their social systems(idk how to call it) are integrated into one single app
so it's this popular because the entire country of China uses it
I have great memories of using AIM, trillian, MSN messenger, Yahoo messenger, Trillian, mIRC, Skype, etc..
Good video!
Telegram in top №1
I still remembered my ICQ account number😆
Now mainly using whatsapp and WeChat, Skype only for overseas clients. No other messenger apps for me
I remember having 5-digits number until somebody stole it :)
@@DataIsBeautifulOfficial Me is 8 digits numbers😜
THIS VIDEO BROUGHT BACK SO MANY MEMORIES 😭 hahahah XD miss the MSN/BBM days..
Good old days with yahoo messenger ui,animations,emojis.😇
Не пойму, чего все сидят на этом ватсапе, если телега гораздо удобнее?
мб бумерам сложно в телегу перейти
Телеграф - наше все!
Вот бы ещё рекламу в нем отключить(
@@armen_kocharyan где ты видел рекламу в телеграфе? Не путай с телеграм.
These videos are like portals to the past
Fiquei surpreso que o ICQ figurou no top 10 até o início de 2012. Lembro que ja no início dos anos 2000 quando surgiu o MSN, absolutamente ninguém ficava mais on-line no ICQ.
It amazes me that more people use Skype than discord..
Not for long
It's still used alot in some offices
Discord is too annoying with their messages, it's like they are trying to communicate with children.
Please never change the music
So many old memories…I remember the girl I had a crush on talking about switching to Trilian, shortly before I lost contact to her. I remember ICQs loud writing sound, or the sudden collapse of MSN. I remember using Facebook messenger, when my phone was stolen and I needed to contact my mom about it…
Today I learned that Skype is still bigger than Discord
Today I learned that Discord is a chat program
Discord is the new era ☀️
Discord is bloat
Meh, because nitro is nerf feature.
A UI slightly less awful than Skype...
Discord is for gaming
Nah.
I like yahoo messenger. I remember you can launch a live drawing pad while chatting with each other, so you can draw stuff instead of just typing it. I don’t understand why the latest message apps don’t have that function. It was pretty neat and handy.
The way MSN jumps 20,000,000 and passes AOL all in under one quarter.
Telegram by far the best app, should be number one
there's special place in my heart for Russian messenger Mail Ru Agent where I spent whole days chatting with friends from the different cities about anime and other stuff. it meant a lot for a teenager to know I'm not worse than other because I'm watching anime
I feel like with Samsung and other Android companies making Google Messages it's default messaging app and the rise of RCS will boost the number of people using it and in a few years Google Messages will pop up on this chart
Sir, how you fit or attached watch in this video?
What? I thought Discord was way bigger than this...
More engaging yes, but much smaller than others.
I hope in the next few years that Signal can be added to this list.
Signal is unsafe. It shows phone number and you can't hide it. This ruins everything about Signal
There are some open-source alternatives more popular than Signal.
Insane how between 2009-2012 basically the entire landscape changed and almost everything on the screen was replaced
Damn. BBM is so nostalgic to me. I used it all the way to its death.
can't wait to see Kik on here 🤣 that was the shit in 2014
2:52 there it is 😍
I truly thought mIRC was the biggest social network in the late 90's. It was the first social network dating back from the late 80's, even before the world wide web existed. mIRC had a big impact in my early life while growing up in the 2000's up to about 10 years ago. I stil consider mIRC to be the best social network ever.
According to this video Tencent was the biggest or one of the biggest over so many years and I didn't even ever heard of it lmao
I'm proud of never ever used whatsapp or even installed a single time in any of my smartphones.
I have no idea what wechat is.
QQ and wechat are china's exclusives if i recall
@@slitnotgm That explains it...
mIRC was created in 1995, You mean the IRC protocol?
@@nicolas65781 Yes. Well even for 1995 I think there wasn't any other social network besides mIRC.
@@HeavenlyWarrior It's true, there was even a default IRC client on Windows 95, it was called "Microsoft comic chat"!
You're missing "Messages By Google" it has over 1 billion downloads... so why is it not on this list?
The good ol’ days of AIM, I miss them. Friends lost to time.
電報は間違いなく最高です🌿
(Telegram is definitely the best)
I googled and ICQ still exist, super shocked!
yeah a lot of people continue to use it because it's their only contact with old online friends. No need to switch to something else when it works perfectly.
I guess it's still popular in Russia.
@@DataIsBeautifulOfficial it is. My wife uses ICQ at job a lot.
i love how irc is on there
where do you find such precise information about this kind of data?do you make some kind of assumptions regarding these developments?
its definitly interesting i thought the chinese messangers wouldve had a bit more given how big china is
Windows Live Messenger will have a special place in my heart
Same here!
The background music 🔥🗿
No Signal? Thought it might have picked up some steam along with Telegram.
Nor that popular yet.
Around 2004 - 2006 I used Windows Live Messenger and it was epic. The best feature was the screen share ... to this day, this isn't possible on WhatsApp or Facetime. We've regressed.
it's not just available on Telegram, there are sophisticated versions of it: u can share just a window of a single program or the entire screen, plus other amazing features.
I wonder how it would look if it was not sorted. The sorting makes me loose overview when I try to follow the ones I am interested in.