Which now leaves me using Google Chat on Pidgin and Skype as my last instant messaging services. I haven't moved to any other newer platform because the mobile-based UI and huge amounts of whitespace are a huge turnoff for me (and I almost tossed Skype when they went that direction.)
AIM will shut down after 20 years
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Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years
#12Ahh, such a shame. I certainly understand why, but it does bring back fond memories.
(Christ if I go any further I'll start waving a zimmer-frame around and begin talking about my lawn).
Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years
#13AOL/AIM away messages were the original social media status update for my generation (at least in my social circle). So much drama went down in those short little notes.
Agreed... it really paved the way for ambiguous and vague Facebook statuses and tweets.
Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years
#14Pity. I spent many, many hours on AIM in my youth. Cultivated friendships, relationships, and many other one-off contacts.
I suppose it has been made obsolete now by Facebook and other social media apps, but those were never truly replacements for AIM in my mind, as most of them have eschewed the venerable screen name in favor of your real name or e-mail address. And for the vast majority of people I talk to online, I don't want them to know my real name. I suppose I am simply a relic from another era.
At least IRC lives on.
Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years
#15I thought it were merged into ICQ, weren't it?
No, ICQ got merged into the AIM network after AOL acquired ICQ.
Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years
#16Aim was really an instrumental part of my youth, I'm actually sad to hear this.
Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years
#17Which now leaves me using Google Chat on Pidgin and Skype as my last instant messaging services. I haven't moved to any other newer platform because the mobile-based UI and huge amounts of whitespace are a huge turnoff for me (and I almost tossed Skype when they went that direction.)
Indeed. Pidgin is so useful as far as the myriad IMing services it supports, and yet so many of them have shut down or moved to a non-supported protocol.
Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years
#18Sad - I believe AIM is the oldest living account where I still know my username/password. I just logged in for the first time in years and not a single other person was logged in. There were people on there I haven't spoken to in 18 years.
It's funny how 15 years feels so ancient in internet time.
Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years
#19Pity. I spent many, many hours on AIM in my youth. Cultivated friendships, relationships, and many other one-off contacts. I suppose it has been made obsolete now by Facebook and other social media apps, but those were never truly replacements for AIM in my mind, as most of them have eschewed the venerable screen name in favor of your real name or e-mail address. And for the vast majority of people I talk to online,…
For me the killer feature of AIM was P2P file transfer. Is there even a service today that does this? It was so easy to just click "send a file" and it worked fairly reliably. Dropbox comes close, but, of course, it is not a direct file transfer.
Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years
#20I spent way too much time in college trying to find the most profound quote from Thoreau or whoever to put at the bottom of my AIM profile.