Total number of ICQ users worldwide?

The challenge with all of these requests is that you need to define what you mean when you say “how many users” there are.

For example, according to Downloads.com, ICQ 5 has been downloaded over 11 million times. Last year, Cnet published a list of the Top 10 Downloads since 1996, and ICQ came in first with (ICQ Pro boasts nearly 260 million downloads). Interestingly, the official ICQ website boasts only “over 150 million users.”

But in reality, you’re probably more interested in how many individual people (figuring that many people have multiple accounts) are actually using ICQ on a monthly basis. That’s where you’ll need to fall back on the network metric reports from companies like Nielsen/Netratings.

No, HTML is disabled in the forums for security reasons. But you can either just paste the URL (it will automatically be converted to a hyperlink) or use something called BBCODE. It’s similar to HTML, but safeguards the forums against bad code.

Here’s the reference for inserting a link: https://bigblueball.com/forums/misc.php?do=bbcode#url

As for Nielsen/Netratings, I suggest you contact them directly, explain what you’re doing and ask if they can give you access to the data. Most of their reports are sold (and are not cheap!). But it never hurts to ask, especially since it’s an academic project.