The bottom of the article links to the history (individual features) of other IM programs from that era as well like ICQ and Yahoo Messenger.
I used that until they pay walled it. Then I found Pidgen I believe it was called. It was open source and could connect to pretty much every messenger and IRC and stuff. Then my friend just switched to texting lol
Pidgin. Before that it was called Gaim.
It still works, as there are plugins to integrate it with almost everything.
I knew it wasn’t spelled exactly like the bird lol. But yeah I used that shit for years. I don’t really have a use for it anymore or I’d probably still be using it
“A pidgin /ˈpɪdʒɪn/, or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from several languages.”
