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The Last Message Sent on AIM

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Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#11

Post by nly »

dan_m2k wrote: post #5

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?

Did MSN Messenger make money for Microsoft before they bought Skype?

Brand awareness for "MSN" just from MSN Messenger alone must have been massive. I'd be surprised today if half of your average kids using WhatsApp have even heard of Bing or Office 365. Hell, if it wasn't for Xbox Live the same could probably be said for that

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#12

Post by gkoberger »

mjevans wrote: post #2

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.

I feel like someone stopping maintenance of a private server is way more likely than the most popular chat client at the time shutting down eventually.

In your mind, who in 2017 was still using AIM, blissfully unaware of the shutdown, only to be met with an error page and the loss of their friends forever?

I'm sure most people are like me... over a decade ago, my AIM friends mostly migrated to text messages (and a few to FB Messenger), and any impending doom of those two protocols will be long-preceded by us having already gone somewhere else.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#13

Post by smaryjerry »

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…

AIM truly became useless. Everyone got phones and texted instead of using computers. AIM was popular before every person had a mobile phone. It wasn’t really AIMs fault. Mobile phones came out and they were too slow to have a decent application. For a few years phones didn’t have the ability at all to download applications. In that span of time AIM was completely replaced by texting. They may have been starting from zero again by the time iPhone and Android popularized app downloads.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#14

Post by juststeve »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #8

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:…

what year though?

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#16

Post by spike021 »

I really miss AIM.

It was the way you knew friends were available to chat. It was much closer to in-person conversation than most media we use nowadays.

It's not uncommon for someone to {iMessage, SMS, FB Message, IG Message, etc.} me while I'm otherwise busy. Then, I need to find a second to let them know of this (unless I either totally drop the ball or consciously decide to not reply). I also need to let them know I'll be free to chat after work, at lunch time, etc.

With AIM, you just logged in and set whether you were available, idle, away, or invisible. Friends knew whether they would disturb you or not.

Not only that but it was pretty much the singular form of instant communication that almost everybody used. Now I have people I reply to on multiple platforms such that we'll even branch off in separate conversations per platform, I only talk to on X, Y, or Z platform, etc.

I'm not one to typically but this is one aspect of social media that I think we've lost over the past decade and it really sucks.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#17

Post by lotsofpulp »

smaryjerry wrote: post #13
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…

AIM truly became useless. Everyone got phones and texted instead of using computers. AIM was popular before every person had a mobile phone. It wasn’t really AIMs fault. Mobile phones came out and they were too slow to have a decent application. For a few years phones didn’t have the ability at all to download applications. In that span of time AIM was completely replaced by texting. They may have been starting from…

I was using AIM to send SMS to people at some point.

https://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/116/send-sms-text-messages-f...

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#18

Post by elcomet »

spike021 wrote: post #16

I really miss AIM. It was the way you knew friends were available to chat. It was much closer to in-person conversation than most media we use nowadays. It's not uncommon for someone to {iMessage, SMS, FB Message, IG Message, etc.} me while I'm otherwise busy. Then, I need to find a second to let them know of this (unless I either totally drop the ball or consciously decide to not reply). I also need to let them know…

> Then, I need to find a second to let them know of this (unless I either totally drop the ball or consciously decide to not reply).

This seems strange to me. I view IM as asynchronous. If someone messages me while I'm busy, I'll just reply later. And I don't expect people to answer immediatly. No need to sync to chat together (of course if we're both available we can chat in sync).

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#19

Post by spike021 »

elcomet wrote: post #18
spike021 wrote: post #16

I really miss AIM. It was the way you knew friends were available to chat. It was much closer to in-person conversation than most media we use nowadays. It's not uncommon for someone to {iMessage, SMS, FB Message, IG Message, etc.} me while I'm otherwise busy. Then, I need to find a second to let them know of this (unless I either totally drop the ball or consciously decide to not reply). I also need to let them know…

> Then, I need to find a second to let them know of this (unless I either totally drop the ball or consciously decide to not reply). This seems strange to me. I view IM as asynchronous. If someone messages me while I'm busy, I'll just reply later. And I don't expect people to answer immediatly. No need to sync to chat together (of course if we're both available we can chat in sync).

Honestly that's my point (and perhaps I should have been more clear about it).

I think in hindsight I vastly prefer synchronous chat- which is why I pointed out in the beginning that AIM was the closest online communication to in-person communication.

With asynchronous communication you do need to be much more proactive in how you handle your 'threads'. As I mentioned before, you need to remember or decide to reply _eventually_. It's also possible that in the meantime your thread (basically 1:1 communication with a person) will fork off (i.e. you share a tweet with someone in Twitter while simultaneously having an asynchronous conversation about some other topic in iMessages).

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#20

Post by tinco »

It was such a senseless destruction. People miss AIM, people miss MSN Messenger and just a couple years later it turned out instant messaging platforms were worth billions.

It's still insane to me these corporations shut down perfectly viable platforms that were still used by millions. The short sightedness and pettiness of these directors is something of legend, I hope there's a chapter about this in new management textbooks, but who knows.

Anyone got a good explanation why it made sense to shut down these services?

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