AOL to shut down AIM instant messenger service on December 15th

40 Comments

“If you were a 90’s kid, chances are there was a point in time when AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) was a huge part of your life. You likely remember the CD, your first screenname, your carefully curated away messages, and how you organized your buddy lists. Right now you might be reminiscing about how you had to compete for time on the home computer in order to chat with friends outside of school,” Michael Albers, VP of Communications Product at Oath, writes on the aimemories Tumblr. “You might also remember how characters throughout pop culture from ‘You’ve Got Mail’ to ‘Sex and the City’ used AIM to help navigate their relationships. In the late 1990’s, the world had never seen anything like it. And it captivated all of us.”

“AIM tapped into new digital technologies and ignited a cultural shift, but the way in which we communicate with each other has profoundly changed. As a result we’ve made the decision that we will be discontinuing AIM effective December 15, 2017,” Albers writes. “We are more excited than ever to continue building the next generation of iconic brands and life-changing products for users around the world.”

Albers writes, “Thank you to all of our AIM users. And definitely stay tuned as we’re fired up to provide more products and experiences that people around the world love.”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: R.I.P., AIM.

SEE ALSO:
Verizon completes Yahoo acquisition, Marissa Mayer resigns; Verizon has combined these assets with its existing AOL business to create a new subsidiary, Oath – June 13, 2017
Apple releases iChat AV 2.1; supports video conferencing with AOL Instant Messenger 5.5 – March 23, 2004
AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) 5.5 upgrade launched; compatible with Apple’s iChat AV – February 5, 2004

40 Comments

    1. If they kill aol mail, I’m screwed. I’ve been using that one for all my personal business company contacts, well since I had to hunt down disks for internet time.

      It’s the only service that has been up and running since I first got a computer. Kudos to AOL for that one.

      Had me.com address and then they killed it. Then it came back again and now it’s a icloud.com/me.com/mac.com. Remember when Apple wanted people to pay for their email address.

      Reply

      1. I’ve got you beat on that one. I got an iTools mac.com account the day Steve Jobs announced it and said it would’ve free forever. It came with the easy to use, if very simple, iWeb among other things. I now have a me.com and iCloud.com account but they both lead back to the original account created almost 18 years ago. What a difference almost 2 decades make.

        Reply

      2. I had the same issue with Earthlink. Had it almost 20 years until they killed there partnership with Comcast. They wanted me to pay for the service. It was incredibly hard to swap all they accounts, registrations, contacts. It took a lot of effort and I still did not get them all. I had to contact software developers with my story so they would update my new email address in there systems. I have my own domain and host my own email. Although I don’t think iCloud.com will go away, fool me once…

        Reply

  4. Aim died when iChat was killed. iChat was absolutely the best out there and like other Apple hobbies, apple killed it.

    Facetime SUCKS compared to iChat. So, I was forced over to Skype. Which also sucks. Horribly cobbled together and buggy.

    I still use my AIM.com email, or you can send it to AOL.com . It’s so funny to see people’s faces when they ask me for my email address and I give them an AOL address.

    Reply

    1. Many of us who are unfortunate enough to live in an area that has, or had, Verizon as the local incumbent landline company were forced to use them as our internet service provider unless we had cable TV (and the local monopolist was often terrible, if service was available at all). A couple of years ago, we were moved to AOL email servers after Verizon bought the company, eventually merging it and Yahoo into their Oath subsidiary.

      When Verizon then sold off much of its landline business to Frontier, we were allowed to keep our old email addresses, which we had been using as our personal and business addresses—and as user IDs for many of our online accounts—for over a quarter century. It hasn’t been ideal, but we didn’t have much of a choice.

      Today I got notice that Oath would prefer that we use webmail or the AOL app instead of a “third party application” like Apple Mail for MacOS and iOS. If we don’t make some fairly esoteric changes to our security settings, we will lose access to our email on November 7.

      Isn’t it wonderful to live under the Verizon/AT&T duopoly?

      Reply

        2. hey, speaking of WWF, have you noticed that they have put in an algorithm that draws the “worst possible letters in the boneyard that least makes a word”?

          H B F V every fucking goddamned game, I still win, but the false random makes the game boring.

        7. Actually you are a gracious loser.

          As to your paranoid conspiracy theory about being paralysed with consonants, the malicious boffins behind the scenes are toying with you, amassing a database of botvinnik moves and countermoves, determining which letter sequences most vex you, and serving them to you with glee. Should you alter your strategy, they are sure to respond with a massive vowel movement.

        9. If I sound intransigent this evening, my apologies. A woman who I loved and admired died of cancer. She was a pearl in a vast bed of stones.

          I’m getting old in my old age.

          Michelle Clark, God bless you…you were the coolest woman I ever met.

        10. I loathe maudlin, but I’m gloriously drunk and profoundly sad tonight. She once asked me, “You’re in love with me, aren’t you?” I said, “Of course.” She said, “Too bad, fetch me a napkin.” I immediately brought her the package of napkins, whereupon she critiqued my Voltaire quotes in the French.

          On God’s green earth, there was no one else like her.

        13. She would play the most difficult Scarlatti pieces on piano, and be so nonchalant, impassive, yet with the deepest exposed soul in her eyes and in her touch, like Fred Astaire dancing. To just be around her and watch her walk…helluva deal.

        17. Don’t emulate anyone, you are great the way you are…and thanks for your understanding with my grief, I have no doubt the libtard sharks that swim in these dark waters will attack me for exposing my humanity.

          All things must pass.

        19. It is good to know what I always had suspected; behind the offensive and crass political discourse hides a normal and emotional human being.

          It is so effortless to hide on the internet behind the, well, internet, and let loose on anyone, since all we see is the most reduced, simplified two-dimensional representation of a fairly complex human being. Most people who participate in heated online discussion would never ever use the same language (or spirit) in person. Most people are actually decent human beings; the cloak of internet allows them to, without consequences, open their spit valve and discharge all that gunk. It is important to occasionally be reminded that everyone here is still a decent human being, after all.

          My condolences to Botvinnik for his loss.

  5. We may be old, but we laid a foundation for you newcomers to get on the Internet, Facebook, text messaging, etc. AIM was a big deal for many of us. I met my husband on AOL Personals. Three cheers for AOL and AIM!

    Reply

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