<story><title>Twitter accounts dropping “.eth” from usernames</title><url>https://gist.github.com/travisbrown/ddea062402cc22cc2aba78bff4d9c95f</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>toast0</author><text>&amp;gt; that time when half the internet switched to ICQ and I&amp;#x27;m still not sure how it was better than AIM but I was convinced it was&lt;p&gt;I had a six digit ICQ, and I knew some people with 5 digits, so you could instantly tell how cool people were. Also, ICQ would say uh-oh when you got new messages, and AIM just dinged.&lt;p&gt;On a technical side, ICQ did offline messages forever and AIM didn&amp;#x27;t do offline until after AOL bought ICQ. ICQ also needed UDP to work and did peer to peer messaging when possible (coordinated through the central server) and I think you could send files sooner. Otoh, AIM servers responded on &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; tcp ports, so if you had a derpy corporate firewall that just looked at ports, and you had any ports open to the internet, you were golden; the java applet client was convenient too.&lt;p&gt;I think ICQ is still around, AOL sold it to some Russian company a decade ago, but AIM is dead; Verizon didn&amp;#x27;t want to keep it running, or Yahoo Messenger either.</text></item><item><author>novocantico</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s really interesting to have been on the internet for &lt;i&gt;decades&lt;/i&gt; and have watched fads like this come and die so often. Like the one where everyone made their avatars be simpson-style, or the one where everyone started putting their pronouns in their profile, or that time when half the internet switched to ICQ and I&amp;#x27;m still not sure how it was better than AIM but I was convinced it was. It&amp;#x27;s such an odd feeling to be outside these fads and seeing them so objectively.</text></item><item><author>gkoberger</author><text>For anyone curious, there was a trend where people were changing their display name on Twitter to their Ethereum Name Service (ENS). It&amp;#x27;s not a URL (even though it looks like it); the concept was similar to URLs though. You&amp;#x27;d point a friendly name to your ETH wallet.&lt;p&gt;The implication of this post is that ETH&amp;#x2F;ENS is dying or people are caring less. In think in reality, it&amp;#x27;s probably less exciting... it was just a fad.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>novocantico</author><text>&amp;gt; Also, ICQ would say uh-oh when you got new messages&lt;p&gt;Wow, as soon as I read that, I heard it in my head, exactly as it was. Since I wasn&amp;#x27;t sure it was a false memory, I looked it up[1], and yeah, it was exactly the same, except in my head it was in a slightly lower voice.&lt;p&gt;Amazing. Instant audio time-travel just by reading a comment.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=6iCPIUGnHQ8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=6iCPIUGnHQ8&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Twitter accounts dropping “.eth” from usernames</title><url>https://gist.github.com/travisbrown/ddea062402cc22cc2aba78bff4d9c95f</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>toast0</author><text>&amp;gt; that time when half the internet switched to ICQ and I&amp;#x27;m still not sure how it was better than AIM but I was convinced it was&lt;p&gt;I had a six digit ICQ, and I knew some people with 5 digits, so you could instantly tell how cool people were. Also, ICQ would say uh-oh when you got new messages, and AIM just dinged.&lt;p&gt;On a technical side, ICQ did offline messages forever and AIM didn&amp;#x27;t do offline until after AOL bought ICQ. ICQ also needed UDP to work and did peer to peer messaging when possible (coordinated through the central server) and I think you could send files sooner. Otoh, AIM servers responded on &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; tcp ports, so if you had a derpy corporate firewall that just looked at ports, and you had any ports open to the internet, you were golden; the java applet client was convenient too.&lt;p&gt;I think ICQ is still around, AOL sold it to some Russian company a decade ago, but AIM is dead; Verizon didn&amp;#x27;t want to keep it running, or Yahoo Messenger either.</text></item><item><author>novocantico</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s really interesting to have been on the internet for &lt;i&gt;decades&lt;/i&gt; and have watched fads like this come and die so often. Like the one where everyone made their avatars be simpson-style, or the one where everyone started putting their pronouns in their profile, or that time when half the internet switched to ICQ and I&amp;#x27;m still not sure how it was better than AIM but I was convinced it was. It&amp;#x27;s such an odd feeling to be outside these fads and seeing them so objectively.</text></item><item><author>gkoberger</author><text>For anyone curious, there was a trend where people were changing their display name on Twitter to their Ethereum Name Service (ENS). It&amp;#x27;s not a URL (even though it looks like it); the concept was similar to URLs though. You&amp;#x27;d point a friendly name to your ETH wallet.&lt;p&gt;The implication of this post is that ETH&amp;#x2F;ENS is dying or people are caring less. In think in reality, it&amp;#x27;s probably less exciting... it was just a fad.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ZoomZoomZoom</author><text>ICQ was completely killed on the protocol level (including numerical UINs) by the current owners around 2018 and later was relaunched as a complete rewrite and an easy and direct way of delivering your messages to your FSB curators.</text></comment>