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The Last Message Sent on AIM

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Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#141

Post by Spooky23 »

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...

Notable gaps:

- Only available on iOS and MacOS

- Copy and paste is unreliable on both iOS and MacOS

- Plugins don't exist on MacOS

- Lots of fail scenarios for phone number switching.

- You cannot control encryption outside of the AppleID ecosystem (AIM supported user certificates)

- You cannot control identity for a corporate device, unless you use Azure AD.

That said, it's a great service that I use every day. But it could be better. Facetime is way worse and more disappointing from an Apple POV.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#142

Post by mjcl »

brmgb wrote: post #75
culopatin wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m still pissed that MSN Messenger died but the hot garbage of Skype continued. I wish the pick for in org chat was MSN and not Skype. Back in 2004 we had chat history, now MS had to come up with the behemoth of Teams to provide that feature. All we needed was msn on Android and iPhone with cloud backup of chats, that’s if.

Lync was MSN and was fairly popular and Skype for business was an evolution of the Lync client not the Skype client. So Microsoft did actually pick MSN. They just kept the stronger brand. Also it always had chat history. Teams is a different beast and a natural evolution. It's mostly centered around meetings and group chat which makes sense because that's what pro users actually want.

Skype for Business / Lync was originally called Office Communicator and has always used SIP for client/server communications.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#143

Post by Terretta »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #95
easton wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can message 100% of all smartphone users, it magically delivers as SMS. Also supports group chats with regular SMS users. Also supports MMS with them.

Given this pretty graceful degradation, what do you mean by not being able to message 85% of smartphone users?

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#144

Post by Terretta »

lordlimecat wrote: post #113
easton wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Isn't there a significant UX trap in moving an imessage enabled SIM over to an android phone?

The SIM isn’t iMessage enabled. The number is registered as a symbolic iMessage ID. That can be fixed.

Here’s how to handle that before you move:

https://support.google.com/android/answer/6156081?hl=en

Here’s how to deregister that later:

https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/

Basically just SMS 2FA showing you control the number to deregister.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#145

Post by voldacar »

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:…

beautiful!

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#146

Post by dan_m2k »

nly wrote: post #11
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

No idea, but I bet the brand equity created for the MSN brand via MSN messenger was indeed huge across a boatload of international markets.

Seems like a huge amount of wasted traction and momentum for the generation that grew up on MSN messenger, and now might be making purchase decisions where that traction could've been leveraged. It's what any other (non tech) brands do very successfully.

I saw someone repost something from msn.com the other day, and was genuinely surprised to see it was still live.

But, the way that the brand was migrated

   MSN Messenger -> Windows Live Messenger -> Bing (?) -> etc etc
was a shitshow and made death a sweet relief for it.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#147

Post by kumarharsh »

Terretta wrote: post #143
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can message 100% of all smartphone users, it magically delivers as SMS. Also supports group chats with regular SMS users. Also supports MMS with them. Given this pretty graceful degradation, what do you mean by not being able to message 85% of smartphone users?

I don't know about other countries, but in India at least, SMS's are generally paid and won't send if you don't have balance.

While WhatsApp/Telegram messages are actually free if you have got data.

And nowadays I get absolutely zero SMS's from people. All senders are now just bots and notification services.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#148

Post by breakfastduck »

moistbar wrote: post #111
phire wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you would set your status to "appear offline" From memory AIM/MSN didn't even have offline messaging. If someone was offline, you either waited for them to be online, or you would contact them via email/txt/landline.

I remember AIM having the ability to forward messages to SMS when you were offline, and Pidgin had the ability to "pounce" someone, which would queue up a message to send them next time they logged on.

Pidgin - now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time!

Made me immediately think of Adium, which I used to talk on MSM via my mac because the official client was woeful.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#149

Post by roland35 »

sombremesa wrote: post #131
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…

Reminds me of the time I read about someone inheriting six figures worth of Apple shares from their grandparents (who had an excellent cost basis, of course) and immediately selling it all to 'diversify'. It's not always easy to understand the long term benefits of holding on to 'risky' positions, and conventional 'wisdom' often steers you away from it.

I think that was the correct call - hindsight is always easier to identify great stocks! In 2010, before I believed in index funds, I had an extra $1k and I was debating to put it in AAPL or this new thing I heard of called bitcoin. I ended up buying apple, and sold it after it doubled thinking I did great... Certainly not a bad outcome but it just goes to show how hard it is to predict anything.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#150

Post by deaddodo »

addicted wrote: post #74
george3d6 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may not be the target audience though, the target audience are probably people that aren't yet "bough into" the google ecosystem. So they are unaware of this axing policy. Anyone logging into chromium, using gmail and google calendar and an android device is already "theirs". What they want is to increase the share of people that are in the MS ecosystem (and presumably also OSX ecosystem, but that's mostly a stat…

You will be surprised how many people are indeed aware of Google’s axing policy, if not even consciously. The reality is that so many of them have been burnt by Google. Picasa was an extremely popular photo management platform used by many. Google Play Music was extremely popular. Google Plus was not exactly popular but touched nearly every Google user, was highly promoted, and then disappeared. And then you come to…

> Google Play Music

This one irritates me most. GPM was mature and required...what? Minimal maintenance at this point?

But no, how about we completely rebuild a music service on top of YouTube, miss a bunch of minor simple features that every streaming service offers (you know, like save current playlist/radio as Playlist) and FORCE every user over to this far inferior service.

At least with transitions like MOG->Beats->Apple Music, it made since as the entire corporate entity changed. But Google just...literally can’t invest in anything that takes a small ounce of manpower to manage.

At this point, OP is correct. The Google “curse” is well known and few people trust their whim-products, no matter their investment/marketing budget.

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