![]() On March 3, 2012, AOL ended employment of AIM's development staff while leaving it active and with help support still provided. The engineers responsible for AIM claimed that they were unable to convince AOL management that free was the future. However, this number only reflected installed IM applications, and not active users. Īs of June 2011, one source reported AOL Instant Messenger market share had collapsed to 0.73%. AOL made a partnership to integrate AIM messaging in Google Talk, and had a feature for AIM users to send SMS messages directly from AIM to any number, as well as for SMS users to send an IM to any AIM user. Usage Decline and Product SunsetĪround 2011, AIM started to lose popularity rapidly, partly due to the quick rise of Gmail and its built-in real-time Google Chat instant messenger integration in 2011 and because many people migrated to SMS or iMessages text messaging and later, social networking websites and apps for instant messaging, in particular, Facebook Messenger, which was released as a standalone application the same year. A version for Symbian OS was announced in 2003 and others for BlackBerry and Windows Mobile Īfter 2012, stand-alone official AIM client software includes advertisements and was available for Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile, Classic Mac OS, macOS, Android, iOS, BlackBerry OS. Third-party applications allowed it to be used in 2002 for the Sidekick. Official mobile versions of AIM appeared as early as 2001 on Palm OS through the AOL application. The company discontinued AIM as a service on December 15, 2017. In June 2017, Verizon combined AOL and Yahoo into its subsidiary Oath Inc. In June 2015, AOL was acquired by Verizon Communications. Its fall has often been compared with other once-popular Internet services, such as Myspace. ![]() AIM's popularity declined as AOL subscribers started decreasing and steeply towards the 2010s, as Gmail's Google Talk, SMS, and Internet social networks, like Facebook gained popularity. Teens and college students were known to use the messenger's away message feature to keep in touch with friends, often frequently changing their away message throughout a day or leaving a message up with one's computer left on to inform buddies of their ongoings, location, parties, thoughts, or jokes. AIM was popular by the late 1990s, in United States and other countries, and was the leading instant messaging application in that region into the following decade. The freedom to communicate with anyone, anywhere, at any time also enabled early online bullying and trolling, which have only gotten worse with the spread of social media that remains a challenge for today’s tech titans to solve.īut whether good or bad, AIM truly set the parameters for most of our virtual interactions, so when it goes dark on Friday, it will be gone but certainly not forgotten.AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) was an instant messaging and presence computer program created by AOL, which used the proprietary OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow registered users to communicate in real time. There’s also a dark side to what AIM brought us, and even a nostalgic goodbye shouldn’t overlook that. These types of interactions primed us to feel normal asking Siri to tell a joke, or querying Alexa about today’s news. Remember SmarterChild? It was a total jerk, but in the early 2000s millions of people used AIM to message this chatbot about everything from whether it liked them to what the weather would be the following day. It’s where millions of us became comfortable with the ideas of tracking each other’s movements online and, most crucially, transferring emotional intimacy with other people from face-to-face interactions to computer-driven exchanges.Įven familiarity with chatbots began, for many of us, on AIM.
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