Programmers: Can you make an ICQ replacement?
 

Make a replacement for ICQ with most of the features us webmasters use. Get some funding and market the product across all boards, shows, resource sites, etc. Charge a small monthly fee for use, maybe $5-10.

If it's good and reliable, I would buy and so would many others. I have over 500 people on my ICQ list and that hardly makes up 25% of this industry, you have thousands of potential members.

There's your business idea of the day. Use it.

Theres a lot of other ones besides icq.... (I'd recommend using trillian for icq anyways). There is aim, msn messenger, yahoo and probably some others. :D

yeah there should be a webmaster messenger... lol

Yeh, but ICQ is the standard. It also has features that others don't use. With proper marketing, we could have a new standard. I would be happy to switch to a reliable service. When ICQ goes down I lose money. Sucks, but it's true.

this would be a great tool
whoever owned it could also get some insider info/passwords/etc
if only webmasters use it, most convos would be interesting to monitor

I did a 3 month research project for my company and still found ICQ was best, and even that sucked. The corporate divisions of Yahoo and AOL have more advanced IM's, but they charge ridiculous amounts.
I think what we need is a couple of hardcore javascripters and a few cases of Jolt to nail this mutha down

i see ur ethical.

i wouldnt do it, just brought up the abuses that WOULD happen.

If you have the money and ppl to promote it and set it up once its done then i can get it done and we split the profit then. programming it yourself or partial and hire others to do some modules isnt that hard for a programmer, but you need ppl that know some ppl that know some ppl.

If your a programmer (unrelated to this) PLEASE ICQ me 46335817 for work.

There are plenty of replacements.

Ideally you should use trillian (www.trillian.cc)
i have had no icq problems at all.

trillian even has a jabber plugin, which i think could be addapted to do what you are talking about very easilly.

I was actually involved in a project writing a messenger / chat program w/ an open protocol that was easy to extend, but due to lack of funding (which causes lack of time, since i have bills to pay) the project got shitcanned, was coming along pretty nicely too, if anyone wanted to do something like this, i'd be game if the money was there

WEG tried this - messenger software for adult webmasters. site might still be up.

I agree ... I would pay for an industry related chat tool

YMEE Yahoo Messenger Enterprise Edition...

Secure encrypted chat..

www.skype.com seems cool

SIMP encryption for MSN works as well if you're concerned about privacy..

there are several chat programs available.. its just that icq is the de facto standard since it was the first to reach critical mass... the problem isn't creating a new chat app.. there are many around that will work.. its getting everyone to migrate over..

(btw javascript is not a programming language...)

Yup yup, people have a very short memory....

How can I have a short memory if I never heard of it?

Like I said, it would need to be heavily marketed.

It would be very easy to take open source code and build one for the community. I've thought about doing something like this, but not sure it would be worth the time spent.