4mo ago

What is the OLDEST online account that you currently still own and still use somewhat frequently?

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I bought a gmail invite from a message board. If this sequence of words makes sense to you, you're old too.
- I got an invite to Gmail when I was in university. Sadly I was at inbox zero for quite some time so I don’t have the Welcome to Gmail email anymore. It’s more than likely my oldest active account. I do have a Neowin account that still works from 2002 but I don’t frequent anymore. Macrumors is my most active old forum account, that’s from 2005. I had an ancient AIM and ICQ account but there’s no way I could remember the account details.
  
  Ditto for the AIM and ICQ.
  I think I read recently that ICQ was shutting down.
  
  I still remember when AIM shutdown for good. That was a sad day.
  
  I mean you could always make a new account to get the welcome email and photoshop the dates and times to make it look like it's older. I imagine the look of the email now is different from 2003, tho.
- :-(
- TIL G-Mail was invite only back then. I am too GenZ to undersand this shit.
  
  A pattern they repeated with Google Wave and Google+, neither of which took off, partly because there weren't enough people using them.
  I genuinely thought G+ could have been a FB killer, if they hadn't made it hard to join.
- Ditto - oldest email I still have in archive is from Nov. 2006 so at least that old
- Mine was from a chain of random people posting their invite links on Slashdot. It feels like ancient history now.
  
  I still have a Slashdot account from 2009. Haven't been on there much in years though. Google would probably be my oldest actively used account as I still use the one I set up with the initital invite.
- Shiiit, actually that does make sense. I remember when Gmail gave you 10 invites for new accounts and you didn't even get them right away. You had to earn them over time. So yeah, invites were regularly sold on the message boards I used to frequent.

173 comments