But those highs were followed by a dot com crash that caused years of repeated layoffs until only a skeleton crew of support staff remained. As Americans embraced instant messaging at the office and at home, AIM was the site of everything from mundane work chats to teenagers’ daring romantic confessions. The 2000s brought soaring popularity that drove AIM’s user base up to more than 61 million and its staff up to 100. Slack, Facebook Messenger, Discord and countless other direct messaging features built into social media apps use the same basic structure that AIM first proposed. Today, instant messaging has remained virtually unchanged. Users could log on and instantly ping messages back and forth, remotely chatting with friends, colleagues and loved ones. At its peak, AOL was responsible for up to half of all CD-ROMs produced, giving users unlimited internet access for $20 a month.īut unlike AOL’s core services-which were only available for a fee-AIM was available as a free standalone app and open source code. Gordon’s experiences with AIM as both a nostalgic childhood chat space for talking about video games with friends and a platform for professional communication demonstrate just how deeply AIM shaped the way people communicate online. “It turned out my old handle was still functional, and I was happy to use this slightly more professional option.” “When I started working at Pitchfork in 2014, the internal office communications system was, somehow, AIM,” Gordon says.

Unexpectedly, AIM popped up again in Gordon’s life more than a decade later, and he appreciated the simplicity of his original screen name. “Nobody is allowed to see what I was posting about Pokemon when I was 11.”

“I will not share that one here, I'm sorry to say, because some of those message board posts are still active,” Gordon adds. He quickly acquired a second screen name, which synced with the handle he used on video game forums.

“My AIM screen name was JeremyG495, which I set up with the help of my father in either 1998 or 1999,” says Gordon in an email. Long before writer Jeremy Gordon covered music and pop culture for the New York Times and The Outline, he was an elementary schooler who logged onto AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) for the very first time.

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