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AIM will shut down after 20 years

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Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#221

Post by likelynew »

pishpash wrote: post #179
gh02t wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With Facebook Messenger, everyone who has the app is always "online." Not exactly, FBM lets you differentiate between people who are "active", as in they are currently using FBM, vs. "last seen x hours ago." The difference from AIM is that being active vs. inactive does not necessarily correspond to whether or not you are up for an engaged conversation, and also that you don't directly control your status since it'…

It is not convoluted, just hidden. After you mention it I searched and it takes two clicks to get to. What it doesn't do is let you snoop. You are either active and see everyone who is active, or not active and don't see anyone who is active, a weird type of "fairness" that doesn't really make sense. All these social networks are definitely trying to use symmetry to push for engagement, which is not always the goal f…

I think a large part on why Truecaller is so successful is because of the same model. It is slightly worse, as by default a user is visible.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#222

Post by saint_fiasco »

wpietri wrote: post #212
jhayward wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they literally killed their own golden goose with stupidity I think this statement misleads readers. Was there organizational stupidity? Always, in every organization. What kept AOL from capitalizing on messaging and social media was lock-in to the subscriber business model, which when combined with market defined quarter-to-quarter EBIDTA driven board goals did not permit leaping at what the people at the core of…

Huh. Do you think investors are happy with how it turned out? Is there any significant interest group that's happy with how it turned out? If not, I'd have a hard time calling that smart. I get that the people with power may have maximized their personal short-term financial outcomes. Which is certainly one way to define smart. But it strikes me as a very narrow one. Look at Bezos, for example. He's spent the last co…

It's not like investors keep investing in the same company all their lives. They are probably happy that AOL made so many millions, and they probably invested in something else when they stopped making so many millions.

The execs are probably not as happy as the investors, but they are still somewhat isolated from the fate of each individual company via their golden parachutes, and they can find jobs as experienced execs in some other company.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#223

Post by thex10 »

Alex3917 wrote: post #62
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.

And that system wasted insane amounts of electricity since each user needed to leave their computer on 24/7. Say what you will about Facebook, but allowing people to leave their computer in sleep mode at night has been an enormous contribution that Zuck has made the world.

Did many folks feel forced to do that due to AIM? For those of us in households with one phone line, we couldn't even be online 24/7 even if we wanted to. I had no problem turning off the computer at many times of day and simply being "offline"..

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#224

Post by jhayward »

mschaef wrote: post #171

Sad to see AIM go for sentimental reasons, but I can't say it's too surprising. The world has moved on. Technically, one of the more interesting aspects of AIM was that it was built on Boxely... one of the earlier (~2004-2006) markup based rendering engines. Boxely was a project by Joe Hewitt (FireBug, etc.) in which the UI was defined entirely in XML with stylesheets and Javascript to make it live. These days it's p…

It was eventually built on Boxely in the middle 2000's but the original AIM HTML component was from an early acquisition of, IIRC, Booklink. This was in the Win3.1 days circa 1996-97.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#225

Post by jhayward »

wpietri wrote: post #212
jhayward wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they literally killed their own golden goose with stupidity I think this statement misleads readers. Was there organizational stupidity? Always, in every organization. What kept AOL from capitalizing on messaging and social media was lock-in to the subscriber business model, which when combined with market defined quarter-to-quarter EBIDTA driven board goals did not permit leaping at what the people at the core of…

Huh. Do you think investors are happy with how it turned out? Is there any significant interest group that's happy with how it turned out? If not, I'd have a hard time calling that smart. I get that the people with power may have maximized their personal short-term financial outcomes. Which is certainly one way to define smart. But it strikes me as a very narrow one. Look at Bezos, for example. He's spent the last co…

Yes, I think the investors were happy with that. They cashed in in a few quarters and moved on to invest in whatever was popping at the time, rather than having to squirrel away that money for another 5-10 years waiting for a high-risk venture to succeed. The folks who would have been happy to do that weren't buying AOL stock, they were putting their money in VC or private equity.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#226

Post by lucaspiller »

jessriedel wrote: post #170
c-smile wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Major difference between email and IM is that email address is public - anyone can send you anything. And IM address is more or less private and restricted - you need to approve other party in order to send you messages. And this, not the latency, makes the difference. People are using Skype for example in "email mode": sending messages even when they know that contact is offline - it will be read later anyway. Yet t…

But none of those things are logically linked or dominant. Why can't I just have zero latency email that defaults to a prominent instant-message-like UI for all emails without a subject line? If desired, you could require approval from the recipient to reach this IM-level visibility if sent by a stranger, with unapproved messages appearing in the normal email box (sorta like FB does with non-friends). If someone is s…

This is one of the reasons why Gmail was a game changer when it launched. Most of the other services at the time offered standard inbox one-message-at-time view, where as Gmail showed them in a threaded view.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#228

Post by megaman22 »

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.

I recall having AIM before I had a cell phone. Particularly since IM over AIM was free, and cell phone companies were still charging people for each SMS message in those days - I want to think it was something ridiculous, like a nickel an SMS.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#229

Post by chrisco255 »

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.

Before Slack there were other examples in corporate chat solutions like Lync which had a good run. It's not like corporate messaging is new. Wonder why that was missed. AOL too consumer focused?
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