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AIM will shut down after 20 years

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Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#281

Post by Banthum »

menerva wrote: post #117
snarf21 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hard to move the ball forward when you reorg every year and have minor layoffs almost every year to keep OIBDA moving in the right direction so the execs get larger bonuses. So many people were in self preservation mode with no interest in anything that was "risky" and might put their bonus at risk. Similar things happened with how they managed MapQuest. Also, if you think they missed a chance on AIM, it is not…

so isn't this capitalism working as it should? they literally killed their own golden goose with stupidity. why shouldn't others disrupt corrupt crap business?

Yes it is. They didn't get the job done, so other firms stepped in and did it better.

Contrast this with communism, be where we'd all just be forced by law to use whatever AOL gave us, forever.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#282

Post by nolok »

wpietri wrote: post #276
chiefalchemist wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. But aside from Amazon who has gotten away with that? Yes, it's a great example. But it's an outlier's outlier.

Toyota's another great example. They went from Japan's post-WWII decimation to the world's largest car company. They did it through an intense focus on increasing customer value and reducing waste. US automakers couldn't come close to matching their quality or effectiveness. This despite Toyota's attempts to teach them through efforts like NUMMI. I think their unique culture has declined over time, but it was still p…

If looking at the mark they made worldwide, I feel the Hilux serie is even stronger than the Prius. Of course "the Hilux war" is a bit harder to use in a marketing campaign.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#283

Post by seansmccullough »

reaperducer wrote: post #90
old_relic_ wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Ya I remember reading in like 2005 that texting was taking off in Europe, and wondering when it would become popular in the US.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#284

Post by c-smile »

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…

> If someone is sending you too many

That's one of the points. I can publish my IM name but I will receive messages only from those recipients whom I will approve.

Publishing email address ... well that's the main reason why we cannot live without services like GMail - to filter out spam.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#285

Post by daturkel »

snarkyturtle wrote: post #270
Jaruzel wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are lamenting the lack of is the 'presence' indicator, where you can set yourself Available, Away, Busy, or simply Offline. Of the current crop of IM clients, only Skype still has it (I think). Of the older IM clients; Lync had it, so did Lotus Sametime, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, and of course AIM. Somewhere along the line the presence feature got dropped, and now we're always 'Available' even whe…

Slack has an 'online indicator' and even AIM-style away messages.

But slack also has no inherently established paradigm of real time vs asynchronous communication.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#286

Post by kilroy123 »

rm999 wrote: post #18

Sad - 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.

Same here. Not a person was logged in. Did the same a few years back. Same thing, not a person logged in.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#287

Post by kilroy123 »

zanny wrote: post #255
hackbinary wrote: post #26

What I do not understand is how has AOL Messenger, MSN Messenger, Skype, ICQ, and Google Chat all managed to be displaced by Whatsapp? I guess it is loss of 'business focus', but the idea of a "messenging app" is incredibly simple, so one would think it would be simple enough to do.

I know Whatsapp apparently has a ton of users but I honestly know nobody that has ever used it. A lot of Discord, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, a little Hangouts, and back in the day MSM, Yahoo Messenger, and AIM. I guess I missed that step in the ladder or something. Same with SMS - from the time I made the leap to Smartphones there were already enough general XMPP clients / Hangouts was good enough to never think a…

I live abroad now and I can tell you EVERYONE outside of the US uses it.

At least in large sections of the world. Businesses have WhatsApp numbers. You see it on signs everywhere. I now find it a pain that people back home in the US don't use it. I use it daily. I literally just typed a message on there 10 seconds ago.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#288

Post by throwanem »

dmpk2k wrote: post #191
zeveb wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or gone with a free alternative like Mattermost & added the necessary bells & whistles. Mattermost today is extremely competitive with Slack.

If Mattermost is competitive with Slack, that's a serious indictment against Slack. Mattermost's clients are awful. Just awful. The phone apps are effectively unusable (incredibly buggy and suck down battery like no tomorrow), and the desktop electron app is a complete hog. It doesn't even handle its faux tabs properly (takes half a second to switch, and it resets the position to the end every time you change a tab,…

Mattermost is a pale, pale shadow of Slack. It's nowhere close to competitive and I doubt it ever will be.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#289

Post by nathanaldensr »

th1nkdifferent wrote: post #244
dredmorbius wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NIST guidelines are for a minimum length of 8 characters and a maximum length of no fewer than 64 characters . What is your basis for suggesting anything less than those guidelines is sufficient? https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/ https://qz.com/981941/the-us-standards-office-wants-to-do-aw...

You should try plotting ease of recall vs the size of password. You will quickly realize there is a long tail beyond 16 characters.

You seem to think recalling passwords is a good idea--it's not. The desire to recall passwords leads to selecting very few passwords (if not just one) for many identities, which is very insecure.

We should be encouraging people to select passwords that they can't rememeber so that they are then encouraged to generate them with a tool (my favorite being KeePass).

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#290

Post by wallace_f »

sgift wrote: post #94
snarf21 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hard to move the ball forward when you reorg every year and have minor layoffs almost every year to keep OIBDA moving in the right direction so the execs get larger bonuses. So many people were in self preservation mode with no interest in anything that was "risky" and might put their bonus at risk. Similar things happened with how they managed MapQuest. Also, if you think they missed a chance on AIM, it is not…

> It is hard to move the ball forward when you reorg every year and have minor layoffs almost every year to keep OIBDA moving in the right direction so the execs get larger bonuses. Is there a an established term for this already? If not I'd like to call it stock market disease due to the usual reason for it.

Executive compensation often comes in the form of equity, but are there cases where execs are obligated to hold the equity over a long time horizon? Say 10-20 years? That seems it would align incentives better for everyone, no?
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