Translated material
“ICQ” will be united with Mail.Ru as an agent and turned into a dating service
Owners of the popular ICQ messages, the people of ICCA, intend to fully unite it with Mail.ru messenger and actually turn it into a dating service, Izvestia reports.
Users of the ICQ will have the opportunity to send paid gifts, find people with similar interests in their city, and also unite groups.
Mail.ru Group, which is the owner of a 100% ICQ LTD company, believes that the new functionality will stop the fall in the audience and will increase income from the ICQ service, the audience of which has been invariably reduced since 2010. If in March 2010 his monthly audience around the world amounted to 44.1 million (of which 18.5 million in Russia), then in March 2013 it amounted to, respectively, only 13.5 million and 8.7 million.
According to Igor Ermakov, the head of the Instant Messaging Mail.ru Group holding, the idea is still at the elaboration stage, "but it is already clear that it is necessary to combine users both in terms of interest and geographical principle."
At the same time, the director of the LiveInternet portal German Klimenko believes that despite all the attempts of the “resuscitation” of the most famous of the Internet mixers, the fate of ICQ has already been resolved.
“ICQ” has already died. She looks like a dead horse that is driven around the city and is trying to revive. Within the framework of Mail.Ru, Group "ICQ" is not needed. By the way, in the same situation, at the end of the grocery cycle, there is also LJ. SUP needs to be closed, but it is impossible - a publicly known project. In this regard, I like Google, which covers unsuccessful projects, despite the noise in the press, ”Klimenko said.
The Internet service to exchange ICQ ( I Seek You- “I'm looking for you”) was created in 1996. Almost immediately I gained immense popularity - its audience began an avalanche -like. Already in 1998, the service was sold to the American AOL for $ 407 million.
In April 2010, the Digital Sky Technologies investment fund (DST), whose co -owner is the Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, acquired the ICQ from AOL for $ 187.5 million. After the DST reorganization in September 2010, ICQ became part of Mail.ru Group.