I’ve had accounts in multiple different protocols for many years. Â My first was ICQ (long since forgotten the number, haven’t used it in ages) and then I moved into MSN along with most of the rest of the non-US world. Â I played around with IRC for a bit in college and then when I joined the Penny Arcade forums in 2004, I got an AIM account and shortly thereafter, Google Talk. Â I also stumbled into the world of multi-protocol messaging clients at about the same time.