Kunal Purandare is Editor-Desk with the Forbes India magazine in Mumbai. He is also the author of two acclaimed books—Vinod Kambli: The Lost Hero and Ramakant Achrekar: Master Blaster’s Master. The postgraduate in economics with diplomas in journalism, advertising and public relations has been a journalist for more than a decade with previous stints at Daily News & Analysis and MiD DAY. Apart from fulfilling his editing and proofing duties for print and web, he also writes on sport and entertainment regularly. At Forbes India events, he can be seen hosting chat sessions with celebs. Apart from his love for reading and writing, he immerses himself in movies and music, likes exploring new places, and enjoys interesting conversations over cups of masala tea.
As Yahoo Messenger logs off forever in July, we look at some popular means of communication that became history Yahoo Messenger Yahoo Messenger made its debut in 1998 as Yahoo! Pager and was subsequently rebranded in 1999. It became popular for its chat rooms and abbreviations like ASL (age, sex, location).
Orkut Orkut marked Google’s first foray into a social network in 2004. A Forbes report claims it gathered 27 million users by 2009, a majority of them in India and Brazil, where ‘scraps’ between friends became a daily affair. The site shut down in 2014.
AIM One of the first and most successful messengers, AIM bid adieu in December 2017. AOL’s instant messenger was one of the first platforms for bots, but is best known for its iconic running man.
MSN Messenger Launched as a competitor to AIM in 1999, Microsoft’s MSN Messenger began as a simple text chat service. It later added features such as photo delivery, video calls, custom emoticons and games. Microsoft terminated the service in 2014.