tonyshowoff
|
No, AIM began in combination with the buddy list in AOL, probably most of you weren't using AOL when it had no buddy list and you had to search for people if you wanted to speak to them; it was a pain in the ass.
It originated primarily as a TCP/IP (i.e. not dial up) buddy list plus IM internally for employees, and it just expanded. Initially it was only for AOL customers as well, there was no method to create free accounts, and to this day there's still an error message for "account already online."
AOL executives repeatedly tried to shutdown AIM once it was in the wild because it didn't have ads on it and it did allow multiple people to use the same account if they already had internet access. It was a huge pain to get, initially only an FTP server that you had to know, and then it was a download page with no information.
At some point in 1998, I think it was, there was an attempt to dominate IM with purchasing ICQ, selling ads in the client to monetise (hence why they hated MSN's access), etc. Only way too late did AOL realise they had a way to get users to the web and thus make ad money, and they already laid off about half of their developers, and then instead of fixing their garbage, they just fired all developers and hired foreign ones, then fired those too, then ran on fumes, and then were taken apart by Verizon to be an ad company, which means eventually it won't exist at all.
There's way more to it but that's a run down of it.
|
![[Reply]](img/forum/topicreply2.png)