AOL Instant Messenger is Shutting Down After 20 Years (Oct 6, 2017)
AOL has begun telling its few remaining users that AIM – its 20-year-old instant messaging service – will be shutting down in December. This clearly isn’t big news in the tech world, given that very few people still use the service and there are far better replacements in the world. But I’m including it today because it’s a great example of the way products tend to stick around long after the early adopter has moved on to newer, shinier things, and often long after most people might assume they’d been killed off. Whenever I write about BlackBerry, for example, I hear from people surprised to hear they’re still around, and most people would probably be surprised to hear that AOL as a company is still in business (albeit now owned by Verizon alongside Yahoo). That’s worth remembering because so much tech news coverage is driven by the cutting edge and the early adopter rather than covering the way mainstream users engage with technology, the products and services they use, and their perceptions of things. (Incidentally, I haven’t been engaging in the nostalgia many others have been today in regard to AIM – I never used it much, I suspect because it was far less popular in the UK, where I grew up, than here in the US).
via TechCrunch
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