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Netmeeting allowed people to chat, video conference, host and join a call, and file share. -
ICQ was a popular chat room software. It was one of the first platforms for instant messenger. -
AOL Instant Messenger or AIM was the most popular instant messenger software created. It is said to be where A/S/L was created (Age, Sex, Location) -
Yahoo Messenger came out a year after AOL Messenger. It competed with AOL as another go to chat Messenger function. -
MSN Messenger came out to compete with both Yahoo and AOL. It didn't succeed very long as it was clunky and just not popular.