US: AOL to end instant messaging service

By Barry Eitel

SAN FRANCISCO (AA) - AOL announced Friday it will soon shut down its iconic AIM instant messaging service after 20 years.

AIM, launched in 1997, will officially close Dec. 15. At that point, users will no longer be able to log on and all data will be erased. Users with aim.com email addresses will be able to continue to use that service.

AOL, originally called America Online, was bought by Verizon for $4.4 billion in 2015 and is now controlled by the Verizon subsidiary, Oath.

“In the late 1990s, the world had never seen anything like it,” Michael Albers, a vice president with Oath who posted the announcement about AIM, said of the messenger service. “And it captivated all of us.”

In the two decades since the release of AIM, online communication has completely changed due to social media and mobile devices. The move to finally kill the service appears to have been linked to the extreme growth of newer rivals such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and texting.

“AIM tapped into new digital technologies and ignited a cultural shift, but the way in which we communicate with each other has profoundly changed,” according to Albers who said, “we are more excited than ever to continue building the next generation of iconic brands and life-changing products for users around the world.”

AIM boasted 100 million registered users in 2001 and instant messaging was seen as the biggest digital communications innovation since email. Users would add others to lists and then could instantly contact them, as long as they were the parties were logged on.

AIM remained a leading online messenger until 2011, when services like Google’s Gchat began to dominate. Other messaging services that were launched alongside AIM have also recently been shuttered – MSN Messenger shut down in 2014 and Yahoo! Instant Messenger was removed in 2016.