I’m sure my fondness for that time is mostly nostalgia, but AIM was so kickass, man.
I remember ICQ being better in every way I cared about, except I couldn’t get people to use it. (offline messaging, you could change your display name without making a new account, other stuff I forget). Kind of like trying to get people to use fediverse stuff now, I guess.
Uh-oh!
I loved the simplicity of it. It did one thing, and did it well enough.
They had an early mobile app (BREW I think), but it was pretty awful.
I think SMS gaining popularity killed it, and they were too early for the “What’s App” era that ultimately killed SMS in a lot of places.
Lol there was definitely an AIM mobile app for flip phones that I installed soon after getting a flip phone like freshman year of high school and then my parents realizing the bill I had unknowingly built up
I remember selecting a pre-android phone specifically because it had a physical keyboard and supported AIM.
Trillian ftw.
XMPP Lives!
I actually used away messages to communicate to people various goings-on in my life. Having to sit down at a computer to message someone feels so foreign now.
/me slaps OP around with a large trout
I was on so many mailing lists for newslatters.
“I’m in your walls, %n”
