

- #AIM AOL INSTANT MESSENGER WINDOWS 10#
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We’ve got things like Facebook Messenger, Slack, WhatsApp, and-perhaps most successful-iMessage. So while the days of AIM are long gone, instant messaging as a concept hasn’t gone anywhere.
#AIM AOL INSTANT MESSENGER FREE#
In addition, the birth of free online services from Yahoo and Google really changed the value proposition of the all-in-one AOL bundle. Despite all of the money and acclaim AOL garnered during those years, it’s been a long time since AOL has been a household name.Īs internet literacy and access high-speed connections increased, the need for a middle-man between users and ISPs decreased significantly. It had its fair share of competitors in MSN Messenger or ICQ, but AIM held the dominant share of the instant messaging market for much of the 2000s. The grip that AOL had on the public’s access to the internet was astounding in the 1990s and early 2000s.Īlong with its web portal, you got access to email, instant messenger, and a number of other web services.

At one point, AOL’s dial-up internet service was the primary way Americans got into the world wide web with up to 10 million users paying monthly. I got access to dial-up 56k internet through American Online starting in middle school, right when I needed it most. Instant messaging has been the last thing on its mind for years and years. It owns a family of media brands including The Huffington Post, Moviefone, Engadget and TechCrunch. It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise though-after all, AOL has been a digital media company as a subdivision of Verizon for years now. What I can say is that the kids that grew up with AIM directly shaped the future of communication into what we see today.ĪOL announced recently that its instant messaging service would be closing down on December 15 much to the chagrin of millennials around the world. I can’t say for sure that we invented all that, nor can I say we used the power of internet communication responsibly. They pioneered chat shorthand, in the same way that the baby boomer generation before them pioneered phone etiquette. It’s the generation of TTYL, AFK, G2G and ROFL. It was an experience of a very specific generation-kids who invested hours of adolescent life in things like screen names, emoticons, away messages, online flirting, profiles and acronyms. Before I had a phone and before I’d ever sent a text message, I used AOL Instant Messenger. Get six of our favorite Motherboard stories every day by signing up for our newsletter. It was, possibly, the last time a push notification didn’t make me want to throw my phone into the ocean. The pleasant plink of AIM’s original notifications are all there in AIM Phoenix, and they pushed a strange dopamine rush through my brain. In a few short minutes we were trading memories of middle school crushes and running home to kick siblings off the phone so we could sign into AOL and check our messages. But I was able to snag my old username and convince some friends to join me. You’re effectively starting from scratch. To be clear, AIM Phoenix only resurrects the original AIM software, and it doesn’t return your old buddylist. Read More: I Used AIM for the Last Month to See if It's Still Good
#AIM AOL INSTANT MESSENGER WINDOWS 10#
The old versions of AIM are touchy on new machines and I had to play with a few different versions before I got 5.0 working on my Windows 10 machine.
#AIM AOL INSTANT MESSENGER DOWNLOAD#
First, you download an old version of AIM from the AIM Phoenix website, register for a new username, tweak the settings to reroute through Wildman Productions’ server, and then open yourself up the nostalgic glory of Web 2.0.
