The bottom of the article links to the history (individual features) of other IM programs from that era as well like ICQ and Yahoo Messenger.
I miss Adium, I used it for a bunch of protocols, and I customized the CSS/html to make it look really awesome.
I had an app called snakeskin or something to skin my Mac OS X to be dark themed.
Adium was awesome, that was the golden age of computing and the internet in my opinion.
With Linux and other FOSS projects surging in popularity, I dare say we’re in for another.
But, sadly, companies don’t seem too interested in making good software for that sake of it being good anymore. Now it’s all about getting you hooked on an eternal subscription.