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The Last Message Sent on AIM

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Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#81

Post by garbagetime »

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 think GP was suggesting each person runs their own computer. So,

>someone stopping maintenance of a private server

Would only mean that that specific person was unreachable. Everyone else could carry on like nothing had happened.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#82

Post by brmgb »

grumple wrote: post #77
brmgb wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 managem…

It would not have been very difficult to pivot AIM into making money. First you add social media style profiles, then ads, then integrations, then feeds... none of this would have relied on mobile. Facebook didn't rely on mobile for many years after formation - the iPhone came out a couple of years after facebook did, and it took a few more years before smartphones saturated the market. Of course, it's easy to say th…

Facebook didn't have chat functionnalities until four years after it's started. AOL might have been able to enter the social network market at the time but the link with instant messaging was far from obvious then.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#84

Post by Spooky23 »

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…

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 others withered as the complimentary services withered (Yahoo) or the corporate strategies shifted in inscrutable ways (Microsoft, Google). It was a weird scenario where MS and Goog behaved similarly... Microsoft with their mysterious purchase and subsequent neglect of Skype and Google with their drunken monkey product management process.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#85

Post by cmonagle »

grumple wrote: post #77
brmgb wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 managem…

It would not have been very difficult to pivot AIM into making money. First you add social media style profiles, then ads, then integrations, then feeds... none of this would have relied on mobile. Facebook didn't rely on mobile for many years after formation - the iPhone came out a couple of years after facebook did, and it took a few more years before smartphones saturated the market. Of course, it's easy to say th…

It's worth noting that AIM did make several attempts to integrate social media features, admittedly a bit late (the same year Facebook launched Chat).

https://mashable.com/2008/05/19/aim-bebo-integration/

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#87

Post by easton »

Spooky23 wrote: post #84
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…

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...

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#88

Post by tantalor »

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...

As an Android user, the most obvious flaw of iMessage is incompatibility.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#89

Post by hahahahe »

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…

When you saw someone on AIM, at least during dialup days, it meant you will get his/her attention. They were logged into engage in real-time conversation. You just don’t have that level of communication anymore. Most online conversations are asynchronous.

Re: The Last Message Sent on AIM

#90

Post by brmgb »

user3939382 wrote: post #79
brmgb wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 managem…

> 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 explose in popularity, it is far from obvious that AIM would have even been positionned to benefit from it. Google Talk was really popular then and notoriously failed to convert that into a leading position in the mobile market.

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