Yes, Trillian sees every network as seperate ones. The contact list has little icons indicating what network they are on, and each chat window also has the same icons.

Trillian has no plans that I know of to make their own network. Jabber does that, but I don't see how you can follow a mission of IM interopibility by adding yet another network. The Trillian method is a good first step. Even MS thinks so, as they tried to add AIM to their client a while back.

I hated the ICQ program, yes, but not the network so much. Offline messaging is awesome. And it has better support for different away modes and such. Just not as much fluff like AIM with buddy icons. And IRC is more of a chatroom setting. It has it's use, and I am in it daily linked with many other coworkers.

And on the friends switchover part, just convince them to get Trillian. You can still chat to them on the AIM network. One thing to get used to is having one person on multiple networks. Right now I have a redundant folder that contains a mirror folder structure of my main list, and contains all the redundant contacts I have. In the future, Trillian will also add a "Trillian Contact". Basicially it's a way of saying "JoBob1233" on AIM is the same as "92938383" on ICQ. Then they show up as online whenever at least one of their connections is working.