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The Last Message Sent on AIM

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Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#91

Post by jlkuester7 »

gkoberger wrote: post #12
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 fe…

> 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.

I have been hosting my own Matrix homeserver and my 4+ years of service life seems to be longer than 80% of Google services... :)

(Admittedly I am just joking with this apples-to-oranges comparison, but sometimes it sure does feel like major corporations are trending towards shorter and shorter service lifetimes for their offerings... and this is coming from someone who rode the Google+ train all the way to the last station!)

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#92

Post by Jenk »

xenihn wrote: post #50
Jenk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They failed to monetise them. Most chat clients were placing ads to try and generate revenue but I doubt they ever made money from it. From what I remember of the blogs at the time, such as Martin Fowler's stuff on Yahoo! Messenger, the infrastructure was far from cheap, and the protocols were really insecure, too. I think Facebook was hoovering up a shitton of the messenger traffic very quickly, too, and the traffic…

AIM was profitable until the day that it was shut down.

AOL was profitable. I can't find any source that states AIM was profitable.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#93

Post by marbletiles »

brmgb wrote: post #90
user3939382 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are just missing that modern instant messassing plateforms have little in common with AIM and MSN. I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. AIM could have created a great mobile app with new features a la whatsapp et al, a new OSCAR protocol that was backwards compatible, and had a huge base of mobile users. Hindsight is 20/20, but it sounds like you're saying that even with hindsight closing AIM was the right cal…

> Hindsight is 20/20, but it sounds like you're saying that even with hindsight closing AIM was the right call. It was the right call. AIM was losing money with no obvious way to monetize it. AOL was not in the same position than Microsoft was. They had little experience selling to pro customers and they were bleeding users to Google Talk and Facebook Messenger at the time. Even knowing that the mobile market would e…

AIM was one of the very first apps on the iOS store — right out the gate. They could have sold it for $0.99 and seen how that went — it went surprisingly well for WhatsApp, after all.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#95

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

easton wrote: post #87
Spooky23 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. AOL in particular pioneered stuff like E2E encryption, etc. imo, the early 2000s platforms like AIM, Yahoo, MSN were the pinnacle of the technology, and successors are all worse in material ways. Today, iMessage is probably the best single messaging platform, which is pitiful because it has key design and UX flaws. I think in the case of AIM, it existed by virtue of and thrived under corporate neglect. The ot…

What are your UX flaws with iMessage? The reason why I like it is because it’s got good UX (except when a message doesn’t send for no reason), but if there’s something I’m missing out on in other messenger apps...

I'd say not being able to message ~85% of smartphone users is a pretty big UX flaw.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#96

Post by gnrlst »

I remember the first time I saw my friend use AIM. It was similar to the first time I saw another friend play GTA III. Both times, we were all huddled together, trying to make sense of this mind-boggingly new experience. I miss that sense of wonder.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#97

Post by numair »

tinco wrote: post #20

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…

Imagine there was an AOL executive in charge of AIM, and that Mark Zuckerberg offered the guy hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Facebook stock to hobble efforts to keep the platform relevant. Sounds like a totally crazy conspiracy theory, right? After all, it would have been totally obviously suspicious if someone made hundreds of millions of dollars by simply jumping from one middle-management role to another, right?

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#98

Post by foldr »

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).

The thing is that this makes it almost impossible to chat to people over text these days. If you try it, it's an infuriating experience where you wait several minutes for a reply every time. In the old days, you could actually have a text conversation with someone on MSN messenger.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#99

Post by mikeodds »

numair wrote: post #97
tinco wrote: post #20

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…

Imagine there was an AOL executive in charge of AIM, and that Mark Zuckerberg offered the guy hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Facebook stock to hobble efforts to keep the platform relevant. Sounds like a totally crazy conspiracy theory, right? After all, it would have been totally obviously suspicious if someone made hundreds of millions of dollars by simply jumping from one middle-management role to anothe…

Are you referencing someone specific here?

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#100

Post by comeonseriously »

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.

> Protocols should also evolve...

This is why something like Delta Chat is a good thing. Almost everyone has email, so evolving email to include chat is a good thing. Also, it takes chat away from single entities.

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