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title TalkerSource.com
layout root

What are talkers?

{% assign talker_info = site.info | where: "key", "talker" | first %} {{ talker_info.excerpt }}

[» read more]({{ talker_info.url }})

What happened to them?

The first talkers often ran as unauthorized services on university networks, whose unamused administrators often forced the talker owners scrambling to find alternative hosting sites; in that way, keeping a talker online was precarious from the start. Despite this, talkers boomed in the 1990s until they declined in both popularity and in the number of operating sites at the end of that decade. Many blame the introduction of the instant messaging platforms ICQ (1996) and AOL Instant Messenger (1997) for talkers' demise, along with end-user expectations or preference for modern, graphical systems over "old school" text terminals.

When talker.com -- the first and largest site dedicated specifically to hosting talker servers -- closed in 2009, the continued existence of talkers was threatened more than ever. Hosting a talker takes time, effort, and system administrators willing to grant shell access. While many talker site administrators found homes on other servers, these, too, atrophied and few remain to date. Understandably, as the talker instances go offline so does their customized source code. By 2010, nearly all of the original distribution sources for the most popular Talker code bases (forks) had disappeared, lost to the great bit bucket in the sky.

Visit the Talker Database to find talkers of the past and some that are still running today!

Why TalkerSource.com?

{% assign about_us = site.info | where: "key", "about" | first %} {{ about_us.excerpt }}

[» read more]({{ about_us.url }})

Codebases by Talker Family

<style type="text/css"> #codebase_index { padding-bottom: 1em; } #codebase_index > h3 { padding-top: 1.5em; } #codebase_index > h3:first-child { padding-top: 0; } .codebase_family_list { columns: 9.5em 5; margin-left: 2.5em; } .codebase_family_list > div { margin-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 0.75em; text-indent: -0.75em; } </style>
{% assign codes_by_family = site.codebases | group_by: "family" | sort: "name" %} {% for family in codes_by_family %}{% assign fam = site.family | where: "family", family.name | first %}

{{ fam.title }} family:

{%for codebase in family.items %}{% endfor %}
{% endfor %}

Looking for more?

This archive project started too late to save them all. But if you find a tarball of classic Talker or MUD source code on that backup tape, Zip drive, or floppy diskette, we want to archive it here!

New submissions, or comments/requests from code authors already in the archive, can reach us by opening an issue on GitHub.

Otherwise, feel free to take a trip down Memory Lane and read the additional material gathered in the course of building the main archive content.