IMO and ICQ are considered to be among the most popular messengers in Turkmenistan. These applications are real mastodons of communication between ordinary users: they correspond through them, send photo and video content, make calls and form interest groups.

Just a few years ago, ICQ began to be in great demand on the Turkmen application market, and ICQ became popular among the people, which, judging by the pace of distribution and popularity, began to claim the status of a leading communication platform. Thus, the long-standing IMO monopoly among Turkmen users has noticeably shaken, and in this regard, two main camps have formed that defend the advantages of their favorite.

In this article, we will try to figure out which of the applications under consideration is more functional and convenient, revealing the pros and cons of the two leading communication platforms in Turkmenistan.

Pros and cons of IMO

The IMO app was developed by a team from California. This service is one of the most popular in the world: it has about one billion downloads in the Play Market. To date, IMO remains the most popular messenger in Turkmenistan — almost everyone who regularly uses the Internet has it.

The average rating of the app on the Google Play platform is 4.2 points, with more than 7.7 million votes. Turkmen netizens note the following disadvantages when using the application:

– The difficulty of using on iOS: the application either does not open, or "slows down" when sending messages,
– calls may be interrupted due to poor connection quality. It is also noted that some users do not have the opportunity to call at all,
– photos, videos and other files may not be downloaded, and the downloaded content loses a lot in quality,
– stories of friends are loaded either for too long, or do not open at all,
– "departure" to channels when you instantly log in to the application, as well as hanging and long loading if you want to exit them.

In addition to these most common problems, individual cases of malfunctions and application errors are also noted. All of them depend on the device used and the frequency of visits to this platform. However, IMO defenders stand firm, noting the advantages of the social network:

– Clear and user-friendly interface,
– easy setup system,
– mobile and online search for possible acquaintances,
– availability of more optimized beta versions of the application (there is also an HD version for high-quality video calls),
– mass character and accessibility,
– the presence of a common feed "Friends of friends" (although IMO opponents would rather attribute this function to the minuses).

After weighing all the minuses and pros, we can conclude that IMO is understandable, accessible and practical, but it has many problems concerning downloads of files and other objects due to the excessive "heaviness" of the application: if you do not control the storage traffic of various data, then the total "tonnage" of garbage saves can be estimated in gigabytes.

IMO has problems, but they are solvable. And their correction will greatly help Turkmen users to continue enjoying the advantages of this platform. Of course, the application is being updated, but this is clearly not enough.

Pros and cons of ICQ

"ICQ" is the very case when "the new is the long—forgotten old." When this social network began to spread rapidly among the population, the older generation of users knew firsthand about it. Now everything is gradually moving to ICQ: restaurants, shops, organizations, and of course bloggers. Ordinary Turkmen users are used to the design and arrangement of IMO and they obviously liked the way ICQ is arranged.

Users in Turkmenistan note that the main advantages of the application are:

– fast download of photo and video content,
– uploading photos and other files only with the user's consent,
– the ability to block annoying channels and prohibit other users from adding to various chats and groups,
– saving the quality of sent photos and videos,
– relatively fast loading of stories,
– special features in ICQ – questionnaires, channels, special publications, etc.

As for the cons, then:

– low mobility when searching for interlocutors.
– long loading with an abundance of messages in chats,
– importunity of various channels and groups,
– scarcity of profile editing capabilities,
– too multi-vector and branched spam shield,
– a dubious system of blocking users.

In addition to the above, the application is well supported not only on Android, but also on iOS. The application is also characterized by regional prevalence: the main market is Asian, Middle Eastern, post–Soviet.

ICQ was developed by the Israeli company Mirabilis and for a long time was under the management of the American conglomerate AOL Inc. Only in 2010, the Russian VK acquired an application that was called "ICQ" by Runet users. And now this "ICQ" is competing hard with IMO for the hearts of users in Turkmenistan. And only you decide who to give your preference to.

Arslan MAMEDOV