AIM

Away messages and slammed doors

Shut down
19902026

AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) was America's dominant instant messenger from the late 1990s through the mid-2000s, launched in May 1997. Away messages, buddy lists and its door-slam sounds defined online adolescence for a generation. Verizon's Oath shut it down on 15 December 2017 after twenty years.

Timeline

  1. 1997
  2. May 1997 Launch
    AOL Instant Messenger launches

    Free standalone messenger with buddy lists.

  3. 1999
  4. August 1999 Incident
    Blocks Microsoft's interop attempts

    AOL repeatedly patches AIM to lock out MSN Messenger clients in the messenger war.

  5. 2002
  6. 2002 Peak
    Dominates North American instant messaging

    Majority market share through the early 2000s.

  7. 2008
  8. March 2008 Feature
    Open AIM opens the protocol

    Third-party clients get official access, years after users already moved to multi-protocol apps.

  9. 2011
  10. 2011 Decline
    Users drain to Google Talk and Facebook Chat

    AIM's network effect finally breaks.

  11. 2012
  12. March 2012 Decline
    AOL winds down the AIM team

    Most of the remaining AIM staff is laid off; the product enters maintenance mode.

  13. 2015
  14. 23 June 2015 Acquisition
    Verizon completes $4.4B AOL acquisition

    AIM becomes a legacy asset inside Oath.

  15. 2017
  16. 6 October 2017 Shutdown announced
    Oath announces AIM's discontinuation
  17. 15 December 2017 Shutdown
    AIM shuts down after 20 years

    All data deleted after the cutoff.

Ownership

AOL 1997–2015 Founded Grew out of AOL's buddy-list system
Verizon (Oath) 2015–2017 Acquisition, $4.4B Retired under the Oath umbrella

Why it shut down

Official line: Oath (AOL's parent) announced AIM would be discontinued on December 15, 2017: "AIM tapped into new digital technologies and ignited a cultural shift, but the way in which we communicate with each other has profoundly changed."

Our analysis: AIM owned American instant messaging for a decade and monetised none of it. AOL starved the product to protect dial-up revenue, Google Talk and Facebook Chat absorbed its users in the late 2000s, and the smartphone finished it. By 2017 the shutdown was a formality.

History

The buddy list

AIM shipped in May 1997, spun out of AOL's in-house buddy-list feature by engineers Barry Appelman, Eric Bosco and Jerry Harris. Crucially, it was free and didn't require an AOL subscription, and it conquered American homes, dorms and offices. The away message was the status update before status updates; the door-open and door-slam sounds are still burned into a generation's memory. Through the early 2000s AIM held a majority of the North American IM market, fighting off MSN Messenger and Yahoo while AOL famously blocked interoperability attempts.

Starved at home

AIM never became a business. AOL's revenue was dial-up subscriptions, and management repeatedly declined to invest in or monetise a free product that might cannibalise them. The team that later built Google Talk included ex-AIM engineers; Gmail integration and then Facebook Chat pulled the mainstream away, and mobile-first messengers finished the job. By the time Oath announced the shutdown in October 2017, usage was a rounding error. It died on 15 December 2017, two decades old, six months after Yahoo Messenger's own death sentence was announced by the same parent company.

Similar projects

ICQ The messenger that gave you a number 1996–2024 Yahoo Messenger Booted from the chat room one last time 1998–2018 MSN Messenger The sound of nudges after school 1999–2014 MySpace A place for friends 2003–now Winamp It really whips the llama's ass 1997–2013 GeoCities Your neighborhood on the early web 1994–2009

Sources

  1. AOL Instant Messenger is shutting down on December 15th Engadget 6 October 2017 [archived]
  2. RIP AIM: AOL Instant Messenger Is Shutting Down December 15 Variety 6 October 2017 [archived]

Last verified: 11 August 2026