AOL bids goodbye to AIM
Before text messages from smartphones, before Twitter and before Facebook, there was AOL’s instant messaging service.
The once-mighty internet service provider’s AIM service, as it was known, was the way to reach out quickly to friends in the late 1990s.
But AOL’s power has long faded — and now AIM is riding off into the sunset.
AOL announced on Friday that AIM will become history on Dec. 15.
“All good things come to an end,” the company said. “On Dec. 15, we’ll bid farewell to AIM. Thank you to all our users!”
Tellingly, AOL revealed the news in a tweet. Twitter, in some ways, is what AIM never grew up to be. AOL tagged its tweet: #AIMemories.”
“If you were a ’90s kid, chances are there was a point in time when AOL Instant Messenger was a huge part of your life,” Michael Albers, the vice president of communications product at AOL’s parent company, Oath, said in a statement.
“You likely remember the CD, your first screenname, your carefully curated away messages, and how you organized your buddy lists,” Albers said. Or maybe not.