Almost half of ICQ users are in Czech Republic
Instant messaging is a popular method of online communication, especially with the younger generation, but it is also starting to gain recognition among corporations. One program called ICQ has found a particular niche in the Czech market.
The name ICQ is derived from the phrase “I seek you.” It is an instant messaging (IM) program developed in Israel and bought by Internet firm AOL (formerly America Online) in 1998 for about $500 million (now Kč 9.1 billion/€ 340 million). Worldwide, ICQ has an estimated 4 million users, but what is surprising is that nearly half of them are in the Czech Republic. “ICQ has 1.8 million users in the Czech Republic, from which 900,000 use the Czech version of this software [distributed by Czech portal Atlas.cz],” said Martin Březina, marketing manager at Atlas.cz. The Czech Republic, Slovakia and Israel account for most ICQ users.
SIM-IM (SIM Instant Messenger) is a free software package licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). SIM provides an plugins-based instant messenger with support for various protocols. Based on the Qt library it works on X11 (optional with KDE-support), MS Windows and MacOS X. All protocols support richtext-messages, file transfer, typing notification, server-side contact list (with postponed synchronization - you can change contact list in offline mode and after log on all changes will be synchronized with server), new account registration, various searches and HTTP-polling. You can use multiple accounts for each protocol.
