AIM will shut down after 20 years
 

https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/6/1...tant-messenger

This is truly the end of an era.

Oh well. I can't think of anyone who still uses it.

Cat messenger was really the only product of America online that I ever used, and I used it Faithfully for well over a decade.

It's not surprising it's gone tits-up, what was the emergence of things like slack and Discord.

Still, good times.

I never used this at all, but it's interesting to see it shut down. It seems all the oldest relics of the internet are being lost in time.

Makes me feel like a dinosaur when I remember all this stuff being new, and the young kids of today will never know about it.

I went to log into it just now for fun to see if I had any new messages since not logging into it for 10+ years. It didn't recognize my E-mail address. *shrug*

Tis must have been an American thing since I've never used or heard of anyone I know irl using it. So it was like IRC and Messenger, pretty much?

It was (or became, at least?) like a hipper, trendier version of ICQ.

So what happens when all message boards/forums close down?

Oh ICQ. I think my brother used that back in 2000-2001.

They won't. What I see happening in the foreseeable future is things like message boards becoming completely integrated into Facebook. i.e., you can make a Facebook page for a thing, then create a message board structure like this.

As for vBulletin, or any other message board software company, even if they shut their doors tomorrow that has no bearing on anyone's installation of message boards, or install files.

Who'd Krang and Shredder have to pay for to host these forums, then?

vBulletin isn't hosting any forums. You just buy and download the board software from them (which gives you a license that expires after 2 years, during which time you are free to upgrade the board... that Krang hasn't done this since the 10 year old version 3.0 tells me he never renewed the license) and install it on your own server. In Krang's case, it looks like www.enom.com is the host, that's who's "holding" the board files that he probably pays some nominal fee every month to do so.

Ah I see. Thanks for the explanation.

Sad to see it go, its one of the chat clients I been using too this day.

Had many great times using the client but it's been like 7 or 8 years since I stopped using it. No biggie.

It's funny to see PlastronCafe and AndrewNDB still have links to AIM, MSN, and Yahoo on their accounts in this thread, haha.

My God, I forgot all about AIM.

Those chat rooms AOL had back in the early 2000s had a sort of alluring and dangerous charm...I remember the news media's hysteria over online predators and the increasing proliferation of online porn videos.

Good times. :tlol:

I loved AIM but I mean last time I used it was literally a decade ago and by that time not many people used it, I remember logging in a few years ago, maybe 2010 or so when I was going through an old computer and trillion the program that let you use all those IM clients at once was installed so I checked to see whatsup and no one was online on any of them.

I really wonder how it even stayed online for so long, I guess it was just so cheap it didn't matter.

When texting became the norm, then FB instant messaging became an option on phone... AIM, YIM, ICQ all ceased to have any purpose, really.

I used to use both AIM and MSN in the past, but yeah, been superseded by many other methods now... mostly use iMessage and FB.

Once FB chat killed MSN Messenger, everything became possible, imo. I'm sure Teamspeak and Skype will die out someday if Discord keeps on growing.

Man I remember having group chats in AOL IM back in the day. I never even used the AOL website in itself and just used the messenger.

I kinda miss those things, it was easier to find new friends that way, and I've met friends I still talk to to this day thanks to AOL and Yahoo IM Nowadays social media only works for people you know in person and it's kinda creepy to get a random friend request from someone you don't know.

I hope Skype sticks it out. It's still the best for multi person podcasts and a good way for friends to send you files too large for email.

IMO the only way Skype dies off is if Microsoft feels there's no longer an investment. Teamspeak's been on life support ever since Discord came to be.

I dont think Skype will ever die out, a lot of people use it, not for the text chat, but for voice and video chat, which is what is primarily used for, shows and podcasts rely on it.

Kinda sad after so long. Although I'm also kind of surprised to hear that it has still been around.

If I used it at one time that was long, long ago. (Unless you had to be a customer, then maybe I'm thinking of something else.)

First Windows Live Messenger, then Yahoo Messenger, and now AIM, ICQ is still around though, and I still use it

I am out of date, I use yahoo to email but don't bother with messenger so I didn't even realist it was gone :lol:
...I was only just contemplating a skype account too.

There's a new version of Yahoo Messenger, but its not the same as the old one, since it rekues on people to send each other messages using there yahoo mail account.