
AIM will be discontinued today - cryptodogemoon
https://help.aol.com/articles/aim-discontinued
======
nerdponx
_Unfortunately you are not able to save or export your Buddy List._

 _Your data associated with AIM will be deleted after December 15, 2017._

 _Yes, you can manually save images and files to your computer until the
morning of December 15, 2017._

Whatever you thought of AIM, it's stuff like this that makes you realize just
how important software freedom is. Insane that there is just _no way at all_ ,
without outright hacking the program (to the extent that hacking it is
possible), to export your data, that you generated, and should by rights be
yours to at the very least save (and not have to comb through potentially
decades of chat history to export pictures and files one-by-one).

~~~
kodt
I, for one, am happy to see all my old AIM conversations deleted and lost
forever.

~~~
klez
Ok, but that should be your choice, not AOL's.

~~~
ct0
It is your choice to save it locally. They are just saying that their copy
will be deleted.

~~~
shakna
> Unfortunately you are not able to save or export your Buddy List.

------
tunesmith
One thing I'll miss about AIM is that it's a communication modality that
doesn't exist right now.

It was everywhere, and on MacOS it was integrated into the OS. For most people
I knew, they had it set to join when they got on the computer. So it meant
that you knew when your friends were at the computer, and you knew when you
could have long "in the background" conversations with your friends.

It was just a different level of intimacy - I had so many longer and
interesting, sometimes deep conversations through AIM (or through iMessage
hooked up with AIM).

On a Mac at least, that's unlike anything we have now with facebook and
Messenger.app. Now when you look at your buddy list, you have no idea whether
they're at their computer or if they're busy or running around with their
phone. I try to get my friends to join a Slack room with me, but we don't
always have it started, or we're in a different Slack room. At any rate there
just isn't that critical mass where you know someone is online and chattable.

~~~
Jarwain
I find Discord to fill this space in a slightly more effective way, although I
don't believe they differentiate from mobile vs. computer use quite yet.
However, I find a majority of my friends (and I personally) use discord mainly
on desktop. I don't even have discord on my phone.

~~~
esotericsean
I use Discord, but I only have it installed on my phone. More convenient that
way.

~~~
binaryblitz
Do you actually use it for gaming?

------
acjohnson55
Truly sad. So much of my young social life was experienced through AIM. Screen
names are still part of the identity of some of my friends. For some folks
that have already passed, our last conversations are on AIM. Don't know what
else to say, but it definitely feels like a link to another era of my life is
fading away. Nothing is permanent.

RIP running man!

~~~
Frondo
Nothing is permanent, exactly so.

Our ability to slog around drives full of data lets us gloss over this fact,
but when we're dead, are our kids gonna keep slogging around our drives? Nah.

Better way to get permanence in your life is to do things that people will
remember you for, if permanence is what you're after. Crowd-sourced in other
people's memories.

~~~
ImSkeptical
That's why you need to keep it on some kind of cloud storage drive arranging
an annuity or trust to keep paying the bills. Then, you have a script on a
cloud server that posts on Craigslist once a year or month, hiring someone to
duplicate your setup on a new cloud provider, opening a port for one of your
existing nodes to connect to and verify, and also ask that person to modify
the reproduction script of the clone, so that it will post on a Craigslist
equivalent but not Craigslist. You'd also need some logic so that the rate you
add clones is limited to the rate at which your fund to pay for the clones
increases.

~~~
Frondo
Haha, a never-ending hell for the kids you leave behind when you die. Love it.
It should email them monthly messages, too. "Your dead parents data is STILL
SAFE."

~~~
ImSkeptical
I'd include in that email an estimate of how much money has been spent on the
preservation campaign so far.

"If your ancestor hadn't decided to dedicate X dollars (inflation adjusted Y
dollars for current year) to this project you would have inherited
calculateInheritant(tauntEmailRecipient, currentYear, familyTree,
preferredCurrencyDenomination). PS - please reply to this email with contact
information for any new descendants. If email is going out of style as a
communication protocol, please reply with a program that, when executed, will
take from standard in a filename that contains a message, and as a second
parameter a contact address. Attached to this email you'll find a project spec
describing this program more rigorously.

------
Cknight70
Something I'll miss about AIM and older chat clients is how compact they were.
Most of these newer chat programs seem to assume you're going to have their
application take up the entire screen.

~~~
mrweasel
Most modern audio players have the same issue. WinAmp/XMMS took up very little
of your screen, while most modern players will assume that full screen is what
you want.

~~~
Cknight70
That's the reason I'm still using Winamp. Its aged surprisingly well and it
has more features than a lot of modern media players.

~~~
Consultant32452
It really whips the llama's ass.

~~~
ansgri
There's also [http://aimp2.us/](http://aimp2.us/), which, AFAIR, in some
respects whips Winamp's ass. Sadly nothing comparable to either on Linux.

------
exikyut
The part that was IMHO completely un-thought-through:

> Can I save my Buddy List?

> Unfortunately you are not able to save or export your Buddy List.

\--

> What happens to my data?

> Your data associated with AIM will be deleted after December 15, 2017.

\--

> Can I save my images and files?

> Yes, you can manually save images and files to your computer until the
> morning of December 15, 2017.

> _(Instructions to manually open each chat then scroll through looking for
> images and files)_

~~~
syntheticnature
I expect it was thought through, and the thought was "a few hundred thousand
people use this service still, it's running under one employee's desk* and is
completely unfunded, no effort above the minimum is to be expended."

*Not sure if this was explicitly said or someone's joking claim during a past discussion of the shutdown.

~~~
aimthrowaway5
The final user numbers were way less than you would guess. It was a service
built to handle tens of millions of users serving thousands. Scaling down that
much is as labour intensive as scaling up. It's not just a launching all the
services on a handful of VMs. The time had passed to make it a WhatsApp etc
competitor.

~~~
ancarda
>Scaling down that much is as labour intensive as scaling up.

Could you elaborate on this? I'm very interested to understand the challenges
of downsizing a cloud service as I've never heard of that happening, and am
surprised to hear it's difficult.

~~~
lev99
1\. Everyone that wrote the code has probably left the company, or is working
on more important projects.

2\. The code was written in 90s and 00s.

3\. I wouldn't be surprised if AOL owns the hardware AIM is running on.
Deploying on smaller servers would mean a complete system replacement, which
always requires large amounts of regression testing.

4\. Big services usually have more dependencies than small services. Each
dependency adds complexity and costs.

It probably is as hard to down scale an old service as it is to upscale a new
service. It's probably less hard to downscale a new service than upscale a new
service.

Also, if your users are dwindling (and not paying) it's less important to give
that software attention.

------
yason
It's amazing how temporary things are. I never used AIM much but if I had I
would have a lot of history in my life with a particular service and now they
would pull the plug. Ditto with Facebook these days. Or hosted software like
Google Reader.

In contrast, I still have most what I grew up with. Disk images of my old
computers, binaries of games and applications, fully usable in emulators.
There's IRC -- while the networks I used then have died a long time ago IRC
probably never dies. I still use IRC on some networks and interface some other
chat services by using a proxy frontend that you can connect with an IRC
client.

But most importantly, I can launch early computer games from my childhood.
It's like having your old toys on a shelf at your parent's house. Not only I
can still try out the game I never could finish (and observe that I still
can't finish it because games in the 80's were often both stupid and
ridiculously hard), but I can put my kids at the controls and tell them this
is what their parent used to play at the same age. It's not just history and
culture but an origin. This is where I came from. For a human being that is a
very concrete, if not tangible, thing, and of value in itself. Now think that
you can't fire up Instagram or Facebook or even Angry Birds in 2035 and tell
someone hey this is how we shared pictures, messaged, and gamed back in the
10's.

~~~
matt_kantor
I share your sentiments but I don't think AIM is an example of this. I haven't
used AIM in 8+ years but there was an easy-to-find checkbox in the official
client (and unofficial ones too) to save all history as simple text files on
disk. I'm pretty sure I still have records of AIM conversations from back in
~1999 in my backups.

Actually the linked article mentions this. Look for "Can I view and save my
chat history?". It sounds like the checkbox I mentioned is enabled by default.

------
jedberg
Goodbye. :(

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2Z2CklSxM0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2Z2CklSxM0)

Since everyone is sharing their AIM memories: When I was in college
(1995-1998), AIM was the #1 way to flirt with people. Today the kids worry
about whether they got a like or not.

Back then, you'd sit and stare at your buddy list waiting for that person you
liked to come online so you could say something witty, and then stew with
worry if they didn't respond but remained online.

~~~
ouid
I was under the impression that in 1995-1998, flirting irl was still number 1.

~~~
jedberg
Maybe in some places for some people, but for us Berkeley nerds it was
definetly online. Of course you had to flirt in person to get their screen
name.

------
niftich
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of doors suddenly
slammed shut, and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has
happened.

------
hkmurakami
RIP.

Browsing friends' creative AIM away messages were the precursor to that
Snapchat status(?) feature I hear about.

~~~
lode
AIM Status messages were the original inspiration for Twitter, then twttr. See
:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/jackdorsey/182613360](https://www.flickr.com/photos/jackdorsey/182613360)
\- twttr sketch by founder Jack Dorsey.

~~~
toomanybeersies
It's amazing (disheartening?) to see Twitter evolve from the website where you
could tell your friends that you were eating dinner, to a website where the
President of the USA makes real policy announcements.

~~~
celim307
well, theres about the same amount of thought put into either tweet

~~~
thenewwazoo
I dunno, I used to spend a lot of time making my status messages really
clever.

------
acheron
_And on the pedestal these words appear: “My name is AOL Time Warner, king of
kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.” Nothing beside remains._

Seriously though, it is amazing to look back on the utter dominance of AOL in
the late 90s-early 00s, and it’s almost complete disappearance shortly
afterward.

------
jamix
> Why is AIM shutting down?

> We know there are so many loyal fans who have used AIM for decades; and we
> loved working and building the first chat app of its kind since 1997. Our
> focus will always be on providing the kind of innovative experiences
> consumers want. We’re more excited than ever to focus on building the next
> generation of iconic brands and life-changing products.

Corporate BS-speak at its best. Three sentences and 0% answering the question.

~~~
thiagooffm
so shitty, they didn't give a SINGLE REASON

~~~
empath75
I can give you the reason.

Everybody at aol stopped using it years ago for internal communication and
switched to slack.

The team had also been cut down to a skeleton crew a long time ago and they
stopped development on it.

The reason why they are killing it as opposed to letting it hang around for
ever is that aol has been in a multi-year long process of moving everything to
AWS and due to the way aim is architected, it would be a major development
effort to make the move, and they just don't want to spend the money.

I'm going to guess the mail product will also face a similar end for similar
reasons.

~~~
wincy
I was amazed the other day to discover my favorite board game publisher, Rio
Grande Games, has the email address (posted in their games as of 2017) of
riogames@aol.com, which really surprised me. I wonder if they're still making
money off of AOL email accounts?

~~~
fps
Verizon bought AOL in 2015 [0] and has recently started discontinuing their
ISP provided @verizon.net email addresses and servers[1] in favor of @aol.com
addresses.

0: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/verizon-to-buy-aol-
for-4-4-bill...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/verizon-to-buy-aol-
for-4-4-billion-1431428458) 1: [https://help.aol.com/products/aol-mail-
verizon](https://help.aol.com/products/aol-mail-verizon)

------
IntelMiner
Goodbye, AIM

You're not dead. Just set to away

------
tombert
While I completely understand why this is being done, it feels bizarre to me.
Since I was 11 years old, AIM was one of those universal constants to me, not
radically different than death or taxes in my mind.

I will really miss the fad of `xXxXmYcOoLsCrEeNaMexXx`, and the cheesy-yet-
charming profiles and away messages.

AIM, I sollute you farewell. Without you, I wouldn't have as many good
memories of my teens, and I wouldn't have the nickname "tombert"

~~~
vollmond
Away messages... haven't thought about those in years. Back when you might
occasionally find yourself away from any internet connected devices. Truly the
00s were a strange time.

~~~
ghaff
I don't generally bother with away messages but I, for one, am routinely away
from Internet devices for hours and even days at a time. Not everyone is
plugged in 24/7.

------
decasteve
I used AIM entirely through Trillian and that’s what I associate it with. I
remember having it alongside ICQ, Microsoft Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger,
all running under Trillian.

It gives me a “Those were the days...” moment.

~~~
Cknight70
Same here! I'm really sad they never added anymore chat protocols, and now
most of the ones I used are obsolete or don't work.

I stopped when all my friends switched from Skype (which I used Trillian for)
to Telegram, but I missed how compact Trillian was.

~~~
oblio
I get the impression that Pidgin, Trillian and the other one I can't really
remember just gave up at some point.

I'm using Pidgin, mostly out of nostalgia, but the default configuration
basically can't connect to any mainstream messenger these days (Facebook,
WhatsApp, Hangouts, Skype or Viber). Plus the UI is so dated, especially
regarding emojis.

Before anyone asks, it's in C and I'm nowhere competent (or interested enough
in gaining the required competency) to contribute.

With stuff like Pidgin you notice what mindshare really means. A "crappy"
Electron based app is nicer to use than the "native" one. In the end, it's all
about coders polishing code. No hours put in, no end result coming out.

~~~
kuschku
> I get the impression that Pidgin, Trillian and the other one I can't really
> just gave up at some point.

> I'm using Pidgin, mostly out of nostalgia, but the default configuration
> basically can't connect to any mainstream messenger these days (Facebook,
> WhatsApp, Hangouts, Skype or Viber). Plus the UI is so dated, especially
> regarding emojis.

Pidgin supports Telegram and Facebook. Well, it did support Facebook, Facebook
is constantly changing their API to prevent that.

Someone also wrote a WhatsApp backend.

WhatsApp forced GitHub to take down the code, and sued the dev.

In this modern world, open chat software is impossible.

~~~
kbenson
I have it in my head that Apple started this (or at least gave it the major
push to mainstream), with iMessage. My impression is that with a major chat
provider with other lock-in (the phone, which has it's own lock in, the app
store), Apple was able to provide a good chat experience, add extras hard to
do with a more heterogeneous ecosystem (facetime, automatic evasion of SMS
fees for iphone-to-iphone messages), and keep the protocol closed without
losing too many people.

Google, who was really the main chat in town at that point with gchat, had to
either choose to extend XMPP some more or go closed. Closed starts to look
really good when you realize that once you have a competitor with Apple's
strength, market and lock-in, being open starts being a detriment, since
anyone can write a client for your app for any platform, but you still can't
support iMessage. Proprietary hangouts chats allow for Google to control where
and how their chat platform is used.

What I'm wondering is how much of this I'm getting wrong because I'm not
seeing the other forces at work. Anyone have counterpoints or corrections?

~~~
leetcrew
i would widen the scope a bit. pidgin is a good example of the modular, open
source model that used to be somewhat common in consumer software.

looking back, there certainly seems to be a correlation between the rise of
Apple and the death of those kinds of programs. these days it seems like only
products that target developers follow that model.

personally though, i think it was the transition to mobile that really did it.
almost overnight people's expectations for UI design got way higher, and most
of them don't really care about modularity or open source. they just want
something that mostly works and _looks_ designed. aesthetic appeal has never
the strong point of OSS.

------
kstrauser
In 1998, I built a computer (her first) for my girlfriend so that she and I
could chat while I was at work. We've been married 18 years now.

Thanks for the memories, AIM!

~~~
DarronWyke
I'm in a similar boat. I met my wife on a website with a mutual game interest,
and we started chatting on AIM. Come to find out she's not too far from where
I lived and I started visiting her once a month. Now we're married.

------
ChickeNES
It's a shame they couldn't open source the original client and server
software, would be interesting to preserve.

~~~
nerdponx
I had the same thought. Now that it's dead, maybe releasing/leaking the source
would be legally defensible as fair use in the name of historical
preservation.

~~~
c22
The source is pointless. You can build a much better chat system on modern
technology in a weekend. The lost value is in their centralized servers with
thousands of existing accounts. I'd always thought services like AIM would be
replaced by more decentralized systems, but instead we have even more
segmented walled garden chat apps where you don't even get to use your own
client.

~~~
yosamino
I will say this: XMPP is far from perfect. But I recently came back to it from
a five year absence or so, and I must say, it's gotten really good. I set up a
server with relatively little difficulty, and since in my circle, it's common
to have multiple messengers on the phone anyhow, asking someone: hey, I want
to use this other one, wasn't a big hassle.

Conversations for Android is really good, and on iDevice ChatSecure works very
well. Much better than what I expected. With filesharing and everthing. And
then there's a bunch more that also work, but not of them at the same level of
Quality.

Marketshare is super-low of course, but I like that it's possible to use an
open protocol.

~~~
nasredin
Just plugging Tox.

[https://tox.chat/](https://tox.chat/)

Decentralized, DHT-like, no phone numbers.

I've researched all others and Tox is the best choice ATM if you want YOUR
data to belong to YOU.

------
pcunite
I had one of the coolest experiences with AOL Instant Messenger. I think it
was 1998 ... my dad and I could communicate over this new and virtual wave of
the future. I could send him a short thought, and like magic, his thoughts
would appear back on my screen accompanied by a cool sound. Even though he was
all the way across town, I felt very close to my dad that day.

~~~
jakebasile
I remember a similar experience when my dad and I tried it out back in the
day. We weren't even that far apart but I remember as a 10-12 year old (can't
remember exact time) asking him to use it to talk to me from the next room
over. I wish I had kept those AIM and other services' messages since they're
mostly lost to me due to either the service shutting down, lost passwords, or
my own mistake of deleting them around the time he died - in my grief I
thought I'd never want to see them again.

It was one of the things that got me into computers. Although it doesn't
directly affect my day to day as I no longer use AIM, it was the first place I
registered my screen name that I still use everywhere. Yes, my screen name is
just my name, but it has significance to me all the same.

------
bonniemuffin
I just tried to sign in via Adium and got "Received unexpected response from
[https://api.screenname.aol.com/auth/clientLogin](https://api.screenname.aol.com/auth/clientLogin):
Invalid DevId" so I guess it's gone.

------
danschumann
When I started using aim, my password was 4 characters, and was a dictionary
word, and I never got hacked. I spent days chatting with friends, chasing
girls. I feel sad.

~~~
danschumann
By the way it was "took" I thought that's how you spelled tukee (the exotic
bird ). Hopefully no one can use this password against me.. Not sure if I ever
changed it!

~~~
jwilk
I wasn't sure what bird is that, so I googled for "tukee bird". Google says
"Did you mean: _turkey_ bird", but it shows me pictures of toucans. I'm
confused.

~~~
danschumann
Lol, apparently I still can't spell it. Is that just a toucan?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixec55yXhKs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixec55yXhKs)

------
wakkaflokka
I wish I could be omniscient for a few minutes just to know what happened to
all the people I've A/S/L'd during childhood. Or maybe I don't want to know -
I imagine some of them probably died from old age.

~~~
orthecreedence
Checking in! I was a huge AIM user. I've had the same screenname since I was
12. Now the only two left in my circle who use it are me and my wife.

I'm really nostalgic about AIM. I met a lot of really cool people on there,
but its time is definitely passed. Luckily having used Pidgin for years will
make the transition for gchat or something similar pretty seamless.

Still sad, though.

------
veridies
I still used AIM up until today. My friends and I just switched over to a
private XMPP server, and we've been using Pidgin/Adium anyway, so it's not a
huge change. AIM has been extremely reliable, I've been able to use it on
every platform I've ever owned (usually with free software), and it's easy to
end-to-end encrypt messages.

My friends and I just never saw a reason to move away from AIM. Everyone just
decided to switch to things that were newer for novelty's sake, and
transferred their friendships and conversations into non-private, non-free
systems. Even Google, which at first used an open protocol, moved to a siloed
system while adding nothing of much value (as evidenced by Google's low share
of the messaging market). And now to talk to people I have to switch between
Google, Skype, Apple, and Facebook, _all_ of whom inter-compatible systems,
all of whom reneged on their promises, and none of whom offer me any value
whatsoever.

This is not a happy day for me.

~~~
esotericsean
You'll still be able to use AIM if you setup a private server? I need to look
into this.

~~~
veridies
As nyolfen mentioned, XMPP is just a competing, decentralized protocol for
AIM-like chat. It has a similar feature set and works with most third-party
AIM clients.

------
smaili
RIP

On a side note, it would have been great if rather than discontinue AIM, they
open sourced it and put it in the hands of the community. It feels somewhat
wasteful to close the doors on such an iconic piece of software.

~~~
ghaff
It takes effort (ie $$) to open source software including making sure it
doesn’t include libraries or other code licensed from third parties.

------
paulie_a
I am one of the dozens of daily users that will be effected

------
phyzome
As of yesterday, they were sending an announcement every 5 minutes about the
impending shutdown. Now when you try to connect, they send the announcement
and then disconnect you. I guess they want to see 0 traffic before they pull
the plug.

~~~
greg5green
Adium just got disconnected about 1:20am EST and shows an error when trying to
connect. Were you using the official client?

------
taurath
End of an era... I remember buying a helio ocean over an original iphone
because it had support for AIM.

~~~
freehunter
I had AIM-to-SMS set up so I could keep my chats going even on my flip phone,
and then on Windows Mobile even if I didn't have data service. These days I
can't even check Facebook unless I have LTE, if the phone says 4G I know I
have no service.

Man how things change.

~~~
majewsky
LTE equals 4G.

~~~
jermaustin1
LTE is an extension to 4G. That said, I'm pretty sure he meant 3G.

~~~
jharger
So I'm an iPhone user as well, and what he said is correct. The phone normally
displays LTE when full LTE service is available. In my experience. when you're
in a normal LTE area, the 4G display usually indicates a really bad signal, as
in it can't establish a full LTE connection, so it's trying to fall back to an
old protocol, and thus your data performance is really bad.

------
cat199
meanwhile slack grows and requires a much heavier desktop client, and people
use fb chat like wildfire

clearly the issue is product mismanagement rather than cultural shifts away
from 'this type of service'

~~~
eric_h
I don't think it was mismanagement - chat followed where people stored their
identities online. One's online identity was for many years their aol screen
name - now, for many, it's facebook.

------
stefantheard
Well this was the actual only way of contacting one person I knew back from my
counterstrike days. CSMario who invented surf maps in counterstrike if you're
out there, drop me a line!

------
jetti
While I haven't used AIM in ages, I remember it fondly. There was a cool
addon/hack for AIM that gave it more functionality such as combining all chats
into one window and the ability to adjust the windows so that you could see
through them. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? If you do, do you
remember the name of the addon/hack?

~~~
goric
DeadAIM [1] was one such hack. I remember it also provided the ability to
manually change your status to anything, including invisible.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeadAIM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeadAIM)

~~~
jetti
That's exactly what I was looking for, thanks! I remember that hack fondly. It
made things so much easier.

------
strictnein
When AOL bought ICQ, there was a lot of concern that they were cornering the
IM market. And now AIM is dead.

------
jdlyga
I tried to login with several of my old accounts months ago, but they blocked
the reset password option.

------
justin_
A few months ago I was playing around windows 98 in VM for fun. I installed an
old version of Netscape that had AIM integration built right in. It still
worked perfectly, and I even was able to talk to a few high school buddies.

RIP

------
knodi
A/S/L?

------
metisploit
Toying with the idea of building "SAIM", an AIM clone (As close as we can
without getting sued by AOL). Anyone want to team up?

~~~
delecti
I suspect that if AOL still cares about their AIM trademark, "SAIM" would be
too close.

Pidgin was originally called "GAIM".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_(software)#Naming_dispu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_\(software\)#Naming_dispute)

------
rb808
brb

------
tfmatt
List of product deaths of the 90s this year:

1\. Hotmail.com

2\. Half.com

3\. AIM

4\. ?

Rest easy old friends

~~~
shak77
Hotmail died this year? How?

~~~
staticelf
It didn't, it became outlook.

~~~
shak77
It became Outlook like five years ago, unless I missed something.

~~~
staticelf
Yeah I don't know what that dude was talking about. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
rtx
First it became live.com

~~~
nasredin
Where does "MSN" and "Passport" fit in this orgy?

Hotmail->Live->Outlook

Hotmail - young rebellious teenager with 2 MB of storage

Live - "experimenting" phase, "monopoly conviction? I do not recall!"

Outlook - Older YUP, approaching middle age, quite cynical, but still might
change, albeit with reluctance and complete lack of enthusiasm

~~~
Macha
Passport was what is now your Microsoft account (aka .NET account, Live
Account, etc)

For a while hotmail was MSN hotmail and Windows Live Messenger was previously
MSN messenger. Now MSN is just Microsoft's portal page.

------
3chelon
I nearly crapped myself. I thought it meant the London AIM stock market (bang
go my investments!).

------
booleandilemma
I remember when my friend introduced me to AIM (and “instant messaging”) in
the 90s.

“It’s like email, but faster”

------
majortennis
good i've been locked out of my account since 2002 anyway. my poor neopets are
starving

------
DarronWyke
Has it already been pulled? I was hoping to do something tonight before it was
shut down.

------
royalghost
Remembers 90's when I would hooked on AIM to chat and make friends....make me
cry

------
lelandgaunt
Goodbye AIM, you were the catalyst to my Information Security career. Good
times.

------
TaylorGood
Rolecall for your former screen name. Mine was:

Tdogg5388

Shows what age I was during peak of AIM.

------
zeep
That's a last minute warning...

I never used AIM... is ICQ still being used...

~~~
syntheticnature
They posted about it over a month ago (perhaps up to three), and if you used
it you were getting regular pings about its upcoming demise.

As for ICQ, last I knew a Russian company bought it from AOL and it is still
operational.

------
bobsgame
Press F to Pay Respects

------
spike021
The end of an era.

------
sosilkj
Anyone else having troulbe connecting to ICQ?

------
avonmach
R.I.P.

------
scottcorgan
sk8naked19

------
alien2003
RIP

------
dwighttk
You see what happens when you repeal title II!?!!

~~~
dwighttk
too soon?

