Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AIM will shut down after 20 years

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 345 posts

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#81

Post by j45 »

choko wrote: post #79
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #14

Pity. 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,…

ICQ lives on as well, though not under the original management. The account I created in the 90s still works.

I have my ICQ id.. If only I could remember the password

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#82

Post by bkohlmann »

This displays the robustness of an relatively unconstrained innovation ecosystem. Even near monopolies - and "sure things" - are subject to unanticipated, but powerful emergence.

As we worry about "monopolies" like Facebook, Twitter, and others, it's comforting to look to the past and see once-monopolies like AIM and Microsoft be challenged and overturned by upstarts. It bodes well for the future of our society that entrepreneurs can redirect the course of history by successfully challenging entrenched incumbents.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#83

Post by j45 »

tehwebguy wrote: post #2

AOL/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.

Aim was definitely the original social network. MSN messenger had its time too.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#84

Post by santaclaus »

j45 wrote: post #81
choko wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICQ lives on as well, though not under the original management. The account I created in the 90s still works.

I have my ICQ id.. If only I could remember the password

> I have my ICQ id

The real important question is how many digits.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#86

Post by KGIII »

ChoGGi wrote: post #59

Back in the day I had to use a few different chat programs (AIM/ICQ/MSN), then came along Trillian, and I could just run the one program. I've since switched to Pidgin (or whatever they called themselves before the rename), it was quite nice not having to bother with all those separate programs. Now we have Discord/Slack/Whatsapp/A myriad of voice chat programs and I'm back where I started. Edit: For those curious, A…

Gaim, I believe it was AOL that made them change their name to Pidgin. Pidgin lives on and AIM is fading into history.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#87

Post by bandrami »

choko wrote: post #79
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #14

Pity. 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,…

ICQ lives on as well, though not under the original management. The account I created in the 90s still works.

Isn't it hosted on the AIM server though?

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#88

Post by empath75 »

dasil003 wrote: post #30
bloaf wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was text messaging before everyone had a computer in their pockets.

Not SMS? Funny how quickly the iPhone has erased the memory of earlier mobile technology. SMS is not only where the term text messaging comes from, but it's older than AIM, older than MSN, older than ICQ.

AOL had instant messages back when they were still a Commodore 64 bulletin board in the 80s.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#89

Post by empath75 »

brogrammernot wrote: post #76
empath75 wrote: post #28

5 years ago, aol still used aim internally for everything that people use slack for today. Group chats, bots, notifications for builds, etc, etc. Then gradually individual teams picked up slack and within maybe 18 months, we went from 100% aim to a gigantic corporate slack team. That was the end of AIM, I think. Aol and yahoo both use gmail internally so I suspect they’re going to shitcan their email services eventua…

That’s fascinating that you guys ended up choosing Slack. I’m surprised because it seems like with the infrastructure already setup, AOL could’ve built an internal enterprise MVP and got a real leg-up on the rest of the competition. Missed opportunity for sure.

They more or less stopped development on aim like 5-6 years ago.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#90

Post by reaperducer »

old_relic_ wrote: post #44
dasil003 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not SMS? Funny how quickly the iPhone has erased the memory of earlier mobile technology. SMS is not only where the term text messaging comes from, but it's older than AIM, older than MSN, older than ICQ.

> Not SMS? Funny how quickly the iPhone has erased the memory of earlier mobile technology. Not sure that's true. I used AIM before I had a cell phone (and therefore SMS). While the technology for SMS has been around since the early 90's it really didn't get widespread adoption in the US until the early to mid 00's. For some SMS may pre-date AIM, but I don't believe that is true for the majority.

It's a cultural thing. When I first started importing phones from overseas to the U.S., I showed a bunch of people at a party how cool it was that I could get e-mail and text messages on my phone. This was 1999.

The majority of the people didn't know what e-mail was, though they did have AOL.

Most knew about text messaging, but laughed at the idea of T9-ing a message to someone for 35¢, when you could just call them and talk to them for free.

I think that is the root of the US/EU divergence on text messaging. Because Europeans at the time had to pay for every call, inbound or outbound, text messaging was cheaper than talking. For Americans, it was the other way around. So each followed the path that was least expensive.

Post reply on HN