I mean, I didn’t even know it was still operating as I haven’t used it for eons, but it’s still kind of sad. Without AIM, my wife and I not have ever started dating.
I still run it, though Pidgin, just to talk to one person. (Well, there used to be more, but he’s the only one left.) It’s been the main way we talk over 10 years…now I have to change? Fuuuuuuuck.
I rarely used my Warn power, unlike my friends who abused it just to be annoying. The first time I did use it, that person was locked out of AIM for over a day
I hated AOL with a passion and I am glad to see them going away, little by little. I don’t know how it is, now, because I haven’t seen their service in years, but it use to be internet for people who didn’t know how to internet. I was a MSN chatter and used MSN Messenger the most, but I did use AIM and Yahoo messenger, because some of my friends didn’t have MSN. And ICQ was even less than the others, but I loved how customizable the sound schemes were; I always had a South Park scheme.
@TheCO2 Ease of access was a big reason. Back then, the dialer was one program. The email was one program. Usenet was another. The web was another. AOL was inclusive, which made is easy for less tech inclined folks.
Even for those who aren’t noobs, another huge plus was AOL had a national modem banks, including smaller cities that other large ISPs didn’t serve. Toll calls would’ve added up huge for travellers since telephone companies charged for any call outside the local area.
@narfcake Yup. There weren’t a lot of choices back in the day, and no one had as many local numbers as AOL. Hotels used to charge outrageous prices for long distance calls.
@walarney Not only that, some ISPs were still charging hourly. This was back in the early days of online multiplayer gaming and AOL’s unlimited gaming was a godsend for us addicts who were spending hundreds a month to play! I still use them as my primary email since it’s short and I haven’t had to change it for over 2 decades.
I have a neighbor who moved 20 years ago who is still on there and we have kept in touch almost daily. He is the only one left. It was cool having a buddy in the laptop by my chair. Now what, facebook messenger?
I used AIM, over the years for less and less people and now only 1. We are debating what to use.
Skype has become a business standard so it’s pretty safe right now. It actually integrates with outlook and exchange (for those large businesses who still run their own). Meh, but handy if you put a sticker over your camera.
@Cerridwyn unsure by your comment if you’re talking about for work or not, but my partner who was using google hangouts, then skype, now has everyone on slack.
my partner and i talked about this last night. i haven’t used it in ages (once i got an ibook in college i went full ichat) but i was thinking the 90s obsessed hipsters might like to use it. i definitely spent my fair share of time on it in my parents basement back in the day, although we never had AOL.
i had yahoo messenger, msn messenger, and icq as well. you always had one person who used a different chat program for one reason or the other.
i think the best thing about AIM was definitely the away messages, which i’m surprised to see no one has mentioned yet! so many angsty vague-but-not-really-i’m-obviously-mad-at-my-parents messages and song lyrics… /wistful sigh…
my partner said he’d like to see that bit return for fb messenger. these days the only thing i use is gchat (or whatever google is calling it now) and the only person i talk to on it is my partner. (although that’s by design - i’m basically permanently invisible on there so no random acquaintances bother me and inevitably ask me to hang out in real life. how the times have changed…)
When I set up my new computer about 2 years ago I decided not to install Trillian or Pidgin to talk to one person on each chat platform. But I still use mIRC!
@callow not much left on IRC either. gaming community has pretty heavily moved off. they were some of the last handouts not related to sex or drugs. I’m sure there are some others but…
I haven’t used AIM in years so, “meh.” Maybe it will stop sending me email reminders of my daughter’s birthday (tho in truth, it may have stopped that a few years ago).
I will note that I first used baqui63 with AIM. (I was dating a woman who spoke Cantonese at the time and the name is badly transliterated from 白鬼 or baahkgwái, literally “white ghost”; I was born in 1963.)
I always hated instant messengers. I don’t like the random interruptions. Even now at work I don’t run Skype like everyone else, but I’m my own department so this isn’t critical. My instant messenger is called “file a ticket”.
It does tickle me when I’m on a presentation call with a vendor, sales rep, or whatever and they leave balloon notifications on for their instant messenger. I’d say maybe 1/3 of those notifications seem work related.
@djslack totally- as an adult i hate them, but as a kid, i lived for them. (rushing back from doing chores or eating a meal to see how many messages you got while you were ‘away’ etc. )
and re: other people’s computers - or you accidentally see their inappropriate desktop, or a message from hotbuns69 or whatever, or if you work in IT and they have to tell you their embarrassing password…i love it.
@djslack I love instant messengers and wish more people used them instead of texting during working hours. Phone calls and texting are far more intrusive of an interruption (for me). But much of that lies in the fact that I can type about 100 words a minute, but can only thumb about 20 words (with errors). And if I really need to work uninterrupted, just set my client to “away” and I am good to go.
I started using them back in my younger gaming days as sort of a team chat outside the game. It was what there was other than ICQ which leaked like a sieve. If I were to look at the list of people on AIM, 99% are from that game I stopped playing years ago and the only person I still talk to on it was someone from that game who became a true friend.
I despise farsebook. So that’s not an option. AIM was nice, a little window at the top of the screen that interfered with little. we might not talk for days or weeks and then we might talk for hours while doing other things.
Judging from reading some of the comments, a few peole are confusing AIM with AOL. AIM is (was) the AOL Instant Messaging client. AIM just kicked the bucket, but AOL is, for the time being, sticking around as a portal company and internet provider (though I personally don’t know a single customer )
@DrWorm true, and i was going to make the same point.
As a side note, I don’t think anyone uses AOL as an ISP anymore. It’s mostly just a hub like Yahoo or MSN for news, email and other things you might need quick access to daily. It still costs money, and far too much, in my opinion. My in-laws use AOL because they run a small business and they don’t want to lose the @aol email address (they’re old and set in their ways).
IRC. I had a friend who was really into taking over channels during netsplits. He wasn’t too big an asshole tho. He would always return control to whomever was legit promptly.
I never really bonded with AIM.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It still existed?
10 years overdue.
…and skype is right on schedule to be the new attack vector for windows… to take poor ol’ msn messengers place.
I don’t even know what it is.
@Barney
@thismyusername Ahh, “You’ve got mail,” I saw that movie!
A/S/L?
@jayplus707 whats your icq number?
@therealjrn I forget
@therealjrn 21034399… Too bad I can’t remember my password or the email address I used for it.
@therealjrn 94456287
Why I remember that, I will never know.
@jayplus707 45/m/Dead Moines, IA
@therealjrn 38511714, but for the life of me don’t remember the password and that email system hasn’t existed since the Clinton administration
@therealjrn uhoh!
how can there be AIM if assholes and Losers went yahoo?
@cranky1950 AOL and Yahoo are both owned by Verizon now and they are merging the two of them from what I read…
I mean, I didn’t even know it was still operating as I haven’t used it for eons, but it’s still kind of sad. Without AIM, my wife and I not have ever started dating.
I still run it, though Pidgin, just to talk to one person. (Well, there used to be more, but he’s the only one left.) It’s been the main way we talk over 10 years…now I have to change? Fuuuuuuuck.
@QuietDelusions I did that for years! (It was Bitlbee, but running libpurple.)
@QuietDelusions Trillian here
I rarely used my Warn power, unlike my friends who abused it just to be annoying. The first time I did use it, that person was locked out of AIM for over a day
I hated AOL with a passion and I am glad to see them going away, little by little. I don’t know how it is, now, because I haven’t seen their service in years, but it use to be internet for people who didn’t know how to internet. I was a MSN chatter and used MSN Messenger the most, but I did use AIM and Yahoo messenger, because some of my friends didn’t have MSN. And ICQ was even less than the others, but I loved how customizable the sound schemes were; I always had a South Park scheme.
@TheCO2 Ease of access was a big reason. Back then, the dialer was one program. The email was one program. Usenet was another. The web was another. AOL was inclusive, which made is easy for less tech inclined folks.
Even for those who aren’t noobs, another huge plus was AOL had a national modem banks, including smaller cities that other large ISPs didn’t serve. Toll calls would’ve added up huge for travellers since telephone companies charged for any call outside the local area.
@narfcake Yup. There weren’t a lot of choices back in the day, and no one had as many local numbers as AOL. Hotels used to charge outrageous prices for long distance calls.
@walarney Not only that, some ISPs were still charging hourly. This was back in the early days of online multiplayer gaming and AOL’s unlimited gaming was a godsend for us addicts who were spending hundreds a month to play! I still use them as my primary email since it’s short and I haven’t had to change it for over 2 decades.
KuoH
I have a neighbor who moved 20 years ago who is still on there and we have kept in touch almost daily. He is the only one left. It was cool having a buddy in the laptop by my chair. Now what, facebook messenger?
I used AIM, over the years for less and less people and now only 1. We are debating what to use.
Skype has become a business standard so it’s pretty safe right now. It actually integrates with outlook and exchange (for those large businesses who still run their own). Meh, but handy if you put a sticker over your camera.
@Cerridwyn unsure by your comment if you’re talking about for work or not, but my partner who was using google hangouts, then skype, now has everyone on slack.
@jerk_nugget thanks, but just personal use
my partner and i talked about this last night. i haven’t used it in ages (once i got an ibook in college i went full ichat) but i was thinking the 90s obsessed hipsters might like to use it. i definitely spent my fair share of time on it in my parents basement back in the day, although we never had AOL.
i had yahoo messenger, msn messenger, and icq as well. you always had one person who used a different chat program for one reason or the other.
i think the best thing about AIM was definitely the away messages, which i’m surprised to see no one has mentioned yet! so many angsty vague-but-not-really-i’m-obviously-mad-at-my-parents messages and song lyrics… /wistful sigh…
my partner said he’d like to see that bit return for fb messenger. these days the only thing i use is gchat (or whatever google is calling it now) and the only person i talk to on it is my partner. (although that’s by design - i’m basically permanently invisible on there so no random acquaintances bother me and inevitably ask me to hang out in real life. how the times have changed…)
/giphy end of an era
When I set up my new computer about 2 years ago I decided not to install Trillian or Pidgin to talk to one person on each chat platform. But I still use mIRC!
@callow not much left on IRC either. gaming community has pretty heavily moved off. they were some of the last handouts not related to sex or drugs. I’m sure there are some others but…
I haven’t used AIM in years so, “meh.” Maybe it will stop sending me email reminders of my daughter’s birthday (tho in truth, it may have stopped that a few years ago).
I will note that I first used baqui63 with AIM. (I was dating a woman who spoke Cantonese at the time and the name is badly transliterated from 白鬼 or baahkgwái, literally “white ghost”; I was born in 1963.)
I always hated instant messengers. I don’t like the random interruptions. Even now at work I don’t run Skype like everyone else, but I’m my own department so this isn’t critical. My instant messenger is called “file a ticket”.
It does tickle me when I’m on a presentation call with a vendor, sales rep, or whatever and they leave balloon notifications on for their instant messenger. I’d say maybe 1/3 of those notifications seem work related.
@djslack totally- as an adult i hate them, but as a kid, i lived for them. (rushing back from doing chores or eating a meal to see how many messages you got while you were ‘away’ etc.
)
and re: other people’s computers - or you accidentally see their inappropriate desktop, or a message from hotbuns69 or whatever, or if you work in IT and they have to tell you their embarrassing password…i love it.
@djslack I love instant messengers and wish more people used them instead of texting during working hours. Phone calls and texting are far more intrusive of an interruption (for me). But much of that lies in the fact that I can type about 100 words a minute, but can only thumb about 20 words (with errors). And if I really need to work uninterrupted, just set my client to “away” and I am good to go.
I started using them back in my younger gaming days as sort of a team chat outside the game. It was what there was other than ICQ which leaked like a sieve. If I were to look at the list of people on AIM, 99% are from that game I stopped playing years ago and the only person I still talk to on it was someone from that game who became a true friend.
I despise farsebook. So that’s not an option. AIM was nice, a little window at the top of the screen that interfered with little. we might not talk for days or weeks and then we might talk for hours while doing other things.
I will be one of those that misses it
Judging from reading some of the comments, a few peole are confusing AIM with AOL. AIM is (was) the AOL Instant Messaging client. AIM just kicked the bucket, but AOL is, for the time being, sticking around as a portal company and internet provider (though I personally don’t know a single customer )
@DrWorm true, and i was going to make the same point.
As a side note, I don’t think anyone uses AOL as an ISP anymore. It’s mostly just a hub like Yahoo or MSN for news, email and other things you might need quick access to daily. It still costs money, and far too much, in my opinion. My in-laws use AOL because they run a small business and they don’t want to lose the @aol email address (they’re old and set in their ways).
@capguncowboy
I don’t even want to think about the end of aol email.
It would be the end of an era.
IRC. I had a friend who was really into taking over channels during netsplits. He wasn’t too big an asshole tho. He would always return control to whomever was legit promptly.