![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
End of an era
Dec. 14th, 2017 03:36 amAIM (AOL Instant Messenger) is getting turned off tomorrow, 12/15/17. I don't know exactly what time but that sort of thing usually means at midnight. And because of time zones, there are a bunch of midnights to choose from.
I remember signing up for it back in 1998, and kept the same handle the entire time. I met a lot of people on there, especially in the completely unmoderated AIM chat rooms that were a thing in the early years. There were plenty of people I met here on LJ but a lot of conversation happened on AIM. And AIM was great for keeping in contact with friends I made offline, when directly visiting them wasn't an option.
AIM used to be the go-to for instant messaging, the darling, the gold standard, but technology moves on. Other methods appeared and stole AIM's lunch. AOL itself became irrelevant. These days, almost every social networking site has a built-in messaging function.
I originally tried ICQ first but I could never get it to work on the computer I was using at the time. Running it would guarantee the computer was going to crash. AIM was a bit more forgiving of the limited hardware, so I stuck with that. (I found out my UIN still works.)
At its peak, there were always several dozen people online at any given time on my buddy list. Over the years that number steadily dropped. At the time of this writing, there are three others still online, and two of them might not be aware their AIM handle is linked to their phones.
I shouldn't be surprised that this was going to happen. Services on the internet come and go at a blisteringly fast pace, and AIM has been around for about 20 years. For comparison, the average Google service lasts about 3-4 years. Someone could say that Google and FB are too big to disappear, but let's remember that AOL also used to be an omnipresent mega-corporation that was valued at billions of dollars.
The writing had been on the wall for quite some time now. Gradually, the AIM servers stopped supporting older software and 3rd-party clients. The new (and only version) that still worked was stripped of features. There was no one on the development team anymore. Even before the announcement, most people knew it was only a matter of time.
So, I'll likely leave up my AIM info and other ways of finding me, just in case someone out there is really trying to look for me using that (even though I know nobody is). I'm not worried about stalkers, because stalkers never go after anyone weirder than themselves, and I'm plenty weird enough without trying.
Stay in touch, y'all.
I remember signing up for it back in 1998, and kept the same handle the entire time. I met a lot of people on there, especially in the completely unmoderated AIM chat rooms that were a thing in the early years. There were plenty of people I met here on LJ but a lot of conversation happened on AIM. And AIM was great for keeping in contact with friends I made offline, when directly visiting them wasn't an option.
AIM used to be the go-to for instant messaging, the darling, the gold standard, but technology moves on. Other methods appeared and stole AIM's lunch. AOL itself became irrelevant. These days, almost every social networking site has a built-in messaging function.
I originally tried ICQ first but I could never get it to work on the computer I was using at the time. Running it would guarantee the computer was going to crash. AIM was a bit more forgiving of the limited hardware, so I stuck with that. (I found out my UIN still works.)
At its peak, there were always several dozen people online at any given time on my buddy list. Over the years that number steadily dropped. At the time of this writing, there are three others still online, and two of them might not be aware their AIM handle is linked to their phones.
I shouldn't be surprised that this was going to happen. Services on the internet come and go at a blisteringly fast pace, and AIM has been around for about 20 years. For comparison, the average Google service lasts about 3-4 years. Someone could say that Google and FB are too big to disappear, but let's remember that AOL also used to be an omnipresent mega-corporation that was valued at billions of dollars.
The writing had been on the wall for quite some time now. Gradually, the AIM servers stopped supporting older software and 3rd-party clients. The new (and only version) that still worked was stripped of features. There was no one on the development team anymore. Even before the announcement, most people knew it was only a matter of time.
So, I'll likely leave up my AIM info and other ways of finding me, just in case someone out there is really trying to look for me using that (even though I know nobody is). I'm not worried about stalkers, because stalkers never go after anyone weirder than themselves, and I'm plenty weird enough without trying.
Stay in touch, y'all.
