AOL Instant Messenger, better known by its abbreviation AIM, is shutting down. The chat service was especially popular around the turn of the century, but is now hardly used. The service will be discontinued approximately twenty years after its introduction.
Owner AOL has put a Tumblr post online in which the company looks back on 20 years of AIM, and in which it notes that it has made the decision to no longer continue with the chat program. According to the company, this decision was prompted by the changed way in which digital communication takes place today. In practice, AOL probably means that AIM was hardly used anymore due to competition from popular services such as the now defunct MSN Messenger, and later Facebook and Whatsapp.
On December 15, the plug will be pulled from the chat program. Then it will be just over twenty years ago that AIM first saw the light of day. The chat service was initially part of the AOL Desktop, but was later offered as a standalone chat program, after which it quickly gained popularity. After the rise of smartphones, apps were released for various mobile operating systems, including Android and iOS, but this did not help the popularity.
In March, it was made impossible for software makers to access AIM’s APIs. That is why it was already expected that Oath, the parent company of AOL, would end the service.