The history of AIM, the early internet’s most important chat app
If you were an internet user at the turn of the century, chances are I could play the sound of a second opening of a door and the memories would immediately come flooding back. Memories of running home from school and logging onto AOL Instant Messenger to chat with your friends or crush. Perhaps memories of how AIM changed the way your company did business. Definitely memories of your old nickname and the scary song lyrics you put in your away message.
AIM was, for a while, the most important chat application on the Internet. It also barely managed to continue to exist. The app was created by a semi-rogue team within AOL and was hated by executives who wanted to keep AOL as the all-powerful walled garden it once was. But once AIM launched, it became virtually undeniable. AOL never figured out how to make money with AIM, or orient its strategy around its hugely influential email service, but AIM still became an Internet icon.
On this episode of Version historywe tell the story of AIM’s rise, its importance to multiple generations of Internet users, and its ultimate inability to keep up with social media, texting, and other messaging apps. David Pierce, Victoria Song, and author and journalist Kyle Chayka document the creation of the platform within AOL, try to understand why it was so vital to life on the Internet for a time, and wonder what might have happened if AIM had remained.
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And if you’d like to learn more about AIM, and maybe spend a few minutes reliving a simpler time on the Internet, here are some links to get you started:
