AIM will shut down after 20 years

Post by skinnymuch » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 1:59 PM UTC

arprocter wrote: post #143

code_duck wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Text messaging = SMS for many people in the US. The term SMS has never been used much by consumers here, that I have heard. People call it texting. It has only been popular enough to be useful since about 2002-2005, which is after the glory days of ICQ for me.

I recall AIM implemented a feature where you could add contacts by cell number (instead of screen name) and then it would send the AIM messages as texts

Post by skinnymuch » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 2:49 PM UTC

cribbles wrote: post #64

I'm still signed onto AIM - through Pidgin - whenever my personal laptop is open. It's the primary way I stay in contact with friends I made through the early-2000s internet. Of course we're also connected to each other on more 'modern' social networks, but there's a certain - undeniably nostalgic - appeal to the AIM chat, continued unabated over the same protocol with the same handles for 15+ years. Funnily enough,…

Post by TheKarateKid » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 3:43 PM UTC

sarcasmic wrote: post #73

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,…

Out of the western networks, Kik, Telegram, and Viber still do usernames. Kik, notably, still has a fairly laissez-faire culture and a userbase that skews young, which makes it the most comparable modern network to the feel of something like AIM in its heyday; with the difference that so many people having overlapping identities, discourse is now fragmented between various platforms for reasons more than just network…

Post by phamilton » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 4:20 PM UTC

mcculley wrote: post #305

phamilton wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> forced to use the actual Yahoo Mail website I left in 2016 and in practice we just didn't use email at all because it was so painful to use.

What kind of work did you do that didn’t require email?

Post by saint_fiasco » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 6:18 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #277

saint_fiasco wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

There are approximately a fixed number of shares out there for a company. When you say investors moved on, that's not exactly true; somebody bought those shares. Somebody took the losses as AOL declined. And although some investors surely were happy to move on, they would surely would have been happier if the stock kept doing well, if they didn't have to move on.