AIM: The Pioneer of Instant Messaging
Raise your virtual hand if you were born before 1996. There are some things we reminisce on that highlight the good ole’ days. Then there are things that will simply age us and remind us that we are no longer the young people in the room. Let’s take a trip down memory lane and give thanks to the OG of DMing, PMing, and online messaging. I bet only a few of my readers will know what I am referring to. For the Gen Z readers, today you will learn about the online sensation known as America Online (AOL) Instant Messaging (AIM). If that famous running man logo doesn’t bring a smile to your face and a plethora of memories to mind, then I am sorry you never knew the good life.
Launch in 1997 as an extension to AOL, AIM became an instant staple of personal computers. AIM was the direct result of three AOL engineers, Barry Appleman, Eric Bosco and Jerry Harris (Jowitt, 2017). Although it was not their job to build a messaging system, the team used old computers they “borrowed” from AOL’s data center to unofficially work on developing AIM. When they successfully developed AIM, they showed the unsanctioned product to AOL, the executives were not best pleased. Management did not want to offer a product free of charge, mainly because it went against the company’s entire ethos. They wanted to kill off AIM and even considered firing Appelman, but with strong backing of the development team, they got approval for the launch of AIM.
Word started to spread, and downloads of AIM grew. On the first night, it was downloaded over 900 times. It rapidly established itself in the United States as a popular service. This instant messaging software changed the way people interacted online. When AIM was created, AOL used the proprietary Open System for Communication in Realtime (OSCAR) messaging protocol. This allowed registered users to communicate in real time (Jowitt, 2017). No more sending emails and waiting hours, and sometimes days, for a response, or sending carrier pigeons to our friends. AIM was the beginning of a philosophy that we now demand as a part of everyday life: conversations through instant messaging.
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I chose to highlight this company primarily because it is safe to say AIM was the pioneer of communications by instant messaging. There is no question that the Internet transformed the way in which the world communicated. A big contributor to that transformation was AIM. The ability to get on your computer and connect with someone without sending an email or picking up a phone or pager, was a brilliant tradeoff for surviving the ever so slow, sometime not-working, dial up internet.
Like all good things, AIM came to an end. But not before inspired the next generation of instant messaging. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Signal, Skype, iMessage and many other varieties of instant messenger applications all derived from the development of AIM. With a decline in popularity, AIM declined in popularity as social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter began to dominate (Brown, 2018). Sadly, on December 15, 2017, the world sad goodbye to the online pioneer we all know and love as AOL Instant Messenger.
Works Cited
Brown, D. (2018, June 26). AOL’s Instant Messenger is back: Meet AIM Phoenix. Retrieved from USA Today: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/06/26/aols-instant-messenger-back-aim-phoenix/736383002/
Jowitt, T. (2017, December 22). Tales In Tech History: AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). Retrieved from Silicon: https://www.silicon.co.uk/e-marketing/socialmedia/aol-aim-history-226431
