Most Popular Messengers 1998 - 2022 

Crazy there is still more Skype users than Discord. I feel like at least 80% of those users are inactive accounts

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.

Tencent QQ: I was the most popular messaging client of the early 2000s Everyone: I don't even know who you are.

I really miss ICQ. It was such a unique messenger and the very first one I used.

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

That "Boom" in 2002 Q1 for MSN Messenger was due to Windows XP being introduced, and it had MSN bundled with it!

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.

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.

It seems the Facebook scandal hasn't affected Whatsapp, but Telegram rises due to the better privacy policy.

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.

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!

Everyday I still miss MSN. Nothing has ever hit the same.

im so happy that this channel has started uploading videos again

Black berry messenger stayed up there more than I expected. I thought they died out when WhatsApp came along.

I'm glad I didn't unsub from this channel during your absence. Keep them coming!

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.

Still remember the days in which we only had one messenger: the postman 😉

These videos are amazing. Thank you. And thanks for pausing on the final frame of data

I just figured out you're back!!! We needed you!

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

I'm using top 5 ,7 messenger app but seeing telegram on top 4 makes me happy idk why but ❤️

And as always, Data is Really Beautiful ❤️

If you want actual end to end encryption, you can't beat Signal. Telegram is a close runner-up.

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.

Great! Thanks for updating this video!

1 minute of silence of the greatest of all: Windows Live Messenger, i miss it

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.

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.

Very cool! It would be interesting to see how applications like Microsoft Teams and Slack factor into this as well.

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.

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

Was part of the mIRC crowd from 2000-2010 or so. Loved those days!

Welcome back!

mIRC was popular for chatting, but it was MORE popular for file sharing. Pre-Napster days.

I would guess that Discord has the highest user retention rate given that most people who use it are on it 24/7 haha

OMG He's back! :o

Team Telegram ♥️ but I will always miss Windows Live Messenger

MSN... still miss it, especially the nudge feature lol

Yo! You are back :)

Incredible video !! Waouh the MSN epoch !!!

Glad that Telegram is still strong.

Trillian is technically not a messenger. It was a tool that combined multiple messengers into a single platform

Wait? You're Back!!!

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

Yees happy to have the best channel back

Ah, yes, the halcyon days of ICQ. I remember them well...

Telegram is the safest of all them IMO. Well, definitely safer than facebook and Watsapp

Interesting. I remember using AOL IM for the first time in June of 1997.

I have great memories of using AIM, trillian, MSN messenger, Yahoo messenger, Trillian, mIRC, Skype, etc..

Telegram is cool.

OMG the way Windows Live Messenger just shot up to the top real quick...

Good video!

THIS VIDEO BROUGHT BACK SO MANY MEMORIES 😭 hahahah XD miss the MSN/BBM days..

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.

Oh good old ICQ🙌🏼 (yeah I’m old haha)

the legend has returned

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.

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

Телеграф - наше все!

That would be cool to have some extra information. For example why the very rapid growth/fall of WhatsApp and windows live messenger

People in 2040: whatsup, telegram, what are those?

I still remembered my ICQ account number😆 Now mainly using whatsapp and WeChat, Skype only for overseas clients. No other messenger apps for me

Discord is the new era ☀️

Used ICQ from 1997 and Yahoo Msg from 1999 to around 2001, haven’t used any of the others since!

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

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.

Telegram in top №1

HE IS BACK

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…

I don’t think anyone predicted Skype is still bigger than Discord

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 just red the description. Congratulations for your little girl

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.

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?

I expected MS Teams to show up there as well, and Skype to fall out of the chart

O que marcou minha adolescência em 2006 foi o MSN e ICQ

I had MSN from 2004-2006ish Yahoo around the same time Aim 2005 til it’s demise in 2017 those were the big ones for me

Telegram, slowly but sure, i think it will on the top.

i feel that shift.... i was there on (m)IRC, i was there ICQ and yahoo messenger, i was part of MSN and used skype, i even had an aol account at one point but it was not my most active platform. nowadays i indeed have fb messenger, whatsapp and signal.... i also have snapchat, but i am readily admitting that i'm actually to old to really like using that to communicate....

I love how you can see exactly when smartphones hit the marketplace. The dramatic shift is almost instantaneous, it’s insane

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.

Telegram by far the best app, should be number one

And believe it or not I still using BBM, BlackBerry Messenger. Yes it still exist, it is now called BBM enterprise, and I love it!!

where do you find such precise information about this kind of data?do you make some kind of assumptions regarding these developments?

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??

Но всё таки Ватсап и Вайбер это приложухи для старух. Филиал одноклассников 😂 ненавижу эти два приложения, особенно Вайбер. Но приходится там сидеть из-за работы.

Never heard of tencent before. Also, really though zoom would make the cut by the start of the pandemic. Guess its really regional.

Very nice

It amazes me that more people use Skype than discord..

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.

Please never change the music

Wow Incredible DIB :) I’m jealous 😂 Question. Do you use Flourish or a different database website? Also, what’s the best way to contact you?

These videos are like portals to the past

Today I learned that Skype is still bigger than Discord

I LOVE this track! Where can I purchase it?

I remeber Trillian, is all messengers in one

Is Discord really not even at 177 million in late 2022?

for some reason i thought Blackberry Messenger would take the top spot around 2008 ~ 2012 since everyone i knew, including myself, was using it! we must have made up such a small percent but damn