How to control multiple ICQ accounts?

February 14, 2006 5:37 PM

Is there a way to maintain the online status of multiple accounts with one instance of ICQ? It's simple to switch to a different account, but can it be done without logging the current user out?

My goal is to use ICQ's online status feature to display 20 team member's current status on a website. I'd set up an ICQ account for each member, then let one administrator control the online status for each. In the end - "green flower" means team member is available, "red flower" means team member is unavailable. Is this possible somehow? All I need to do is get past the switching user=logging out problem.

posted by davebush to computers & internet (4 comments total)

I'm not sure if this is possible with the official client, but should be with a third party one. GAIM lets you add as many ICQ accounts as you want, and separately control the status of each. I don't think it's possible with Trillian, and it isn't with Miranda IM.
posted by zsazsa at 5:43 PM on February 14, 2006

zsazsa - thanks tons. Gaim is the ticket. I tried it and it works perfectly. I love Ask Mefi.
posted by davebush at 7:08 PM on February 14, 2006

I do think Trillian allows any many concurrent logged-in accounts to a given IM service as you'd like, FWIW.
posted by TonyRobots at 8:25 PM on February 14, 2006

Trillian does let you add as many accounts of any type that you want, but if you want them to be treated as separate accounts, you need Trillian Pro. For example, if you add 2 MSN accounts to Trillian free, it will merge the contact lists so that your contact lists now match for both accounts. They have to have SOME value-adds for the Pro version! :)
posted by antifuse at 2:14 AM on February 15, 2006