I don't know how many people used ICQ back when it was big, but ICQ was the client I started using in college in 2000 to trade movies with friends. At the time it had better file transfer options than other instant messaging clients, and it also had this kind of cool but dangerous feature where it showed what someone was typing as they were typing, and then removed the typing if they deleted before sending. This could be fun if you wanted to make underhanded comments without committing to them, but it meant you also couldn't rethink what you were saying before you sent it. Well now AOL has released a beta of AOL AIM 6.8 featuring "Real-Time IM", which is the only major feature update for AIM 6.8. It's kind of sad that this innovation existed at least 7 years ago in a now almost extinct IM client that had features apparently way ahead of its time.
