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The Last Message Sent on AIM

justanman.org

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Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#2

Post by mjevans »

This is why it's important, as a group, to roll your server. Own the infrastructure of communication and discourse. To utilize open standards for which you or anyone else can create and run their own server, or client.

Protocols should also evolve, or have organized successors over time. If you do provide backward compatibility, please do the best reasonable effort at making backward features work.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#3

Post by toast0 »

The shutdown of AIM makes me sad, but I had maybe one holdout contact left (who I still speak with, but on other services).

I'm sure there's all sort of business lessons we could learn here. Among them that an early lead doesn't always lead to lasting success. AIM federated with Apple iChat, Facebook Messenger, and Google Talk, as well as ICQ after they purchased it over the years, but that didn't turn into anything lasting either.

It's probably my bias from working at WhatsApp; but I don't think they did a great job working with mobile, and that combined with lack of support from management killed them when smartphones took over the mobile market. They did have some support for AIM on feature phones, but I think it was all based on SMS, which was costly, and I don't know if they had made a compelling Android app (wikipedia says they did have an Android app; but who knows if it was good); I never ran iOS, so I don't know if their iPhone app was any good, but I never heard from friends with iPhones that they were using it, so I'm guessing not so great.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#4

Post by lotsofpulp »

toast0 wrote: post #3

The shutdown of AIM makes me sad, but I had maybe one holdout contact left (who I still speak with, but on other services). I'm sure there's all sort of business lessons we could learn here. Among them that an early lead doesn't always lead to lasting success. AIM federated with Apple iChat, Facebook Messenger, and Google Talk, as well as ICQ after they purchased it over the years, but that didn't turn into anything…

WhatsApp offered two things for my social graph:

1) got rid of usernames/passwords. This was a surprisingly high barrier for non tech literate people to pass, and WhatsApp made it dead simple for them to download from app store, install, and start chatting with their contacts.

2) SMS verification eliminated spam

And the timing was perfect. Data plans and smartphones were just coming into the fore, and WhatsApp popped in as an alternative to the extremely inferior MMS option, and gave people a free way to communicate across borders.

I also remember having trouble sharing contacts prior to WhatsApp, and after WhatsApp, it didn't matter what mobileOS the other person was using, I could just send a contact, and they would be able to add it to theirs. Same with location. And the picture/video sharing was way nicer early on also, albeit heavily compressed, it just worked.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#5

Post by dan_m2k »

A nice little slice of internet history.

True is the lesson that scale doesn’t represent success. I wonder how many of the current tech companies will learn the same lesson, or have we reached a period of maturity where products that don’t contribute to the bottom line aren’t allowed to linger like this did?

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#6

Post by mrweasel »

Normally I happy to shutdown services or delete code, less stuff, less stuff to maintain, but something as dear as AIM might be harder.

It’s always a little sad to think of something like “the last message sent”, but there’s also someone, somewhere, with the last commit to the AIM server code. Writing the final AIM server bugfix cannot have been cheerful work, I mean want was the point, the developer most likely knew that the service would shutdown.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#8

Post by CGamesPlay »

I was browsing through a backup of an old computer that ran Pidgin and had chat logging on. One of the last AIM messages I ever received went like this:

    Conversation at Mon Jan 15 01:16:36 2007
    (01:16:36) Megan: omg it's ryan.
    (01:17:41) Megan: and then in time...
    (01:17:53) Megan: the friends faded away
    (01:18:14) Megan: and the instanst IMs that'd open were deleted
    (01:18:28) Megan: and responses never came
    (01:18:39) Megan: and then never even talked anymore
    (01:18:50) Megan: and then hadn't hung out in forever
    (01:19:02) Megan: ...but it was ok.
    (01:19:09) Megan: because that is life.
    (01:19:28) Megan: and she was thankful for the past they had,
    (01:19:38) Megan: even if there was no present.
    (02:31:57) Megan has signed off.
(best read while playing Vangelis - Tears in Rain)
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