Although the messaging service hasn't been widely used for a while now, AOL's instant messenger, AIM, has still been available to us all. Now the service will be officially shutting down in December. While many of us don't use AIM at all anymore, it's still a little sad to see it go. It served us for many purposes and helped us keep in touch with a lot of people. Unfortunately, it just couldn't keep up with new technology.

The sad nostalgia

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, we didn't use Facebook messenger like we do now. And we didn't have iMessage on our phones.

A lot of people didn't even have cell phones and definitely didn't use them to send messages. When our friends from school moved away or we went to college, AIM was our best hope. Having an instant messaging service like AIM was wonderful and helped many of us feel less alone in hard times of our lives. It's not in person interaction, but it's still interaction. It was still an amazing way to keep in touch with long-distance friends and family.

While many of us do have fond memories of the service, we did ultimately forget about it. A lot of people already thought that AIM had gone down years ago. We had no idea that it was still running. Perhaps it was AOL's goal to keep AIM running for 20 years, but it's finally time to let go.

Why AIM was never built to last

Unfortunately, AIM would never last like other instant messengers have. It didn't fit into AOL's plans very well and they didn't take the best care of it.

It never really updated to add different features. On Facebook's instant messenger, you can send and request money, share pictures, share audio, make audio calls, and even do video calls. That isn't the case with AIM and never would be.

It's almost like AOL had too much on their plate. They spent a lot of time fixing up their domain to become one that was easy to use and popular.

In that sense, they made it. Because AIM was never their focus, AIM wouldn't last. AIM never got the same abilities and features that we have with other services. And it's so full of advertisements that many people found it annoying or hard to use. When something like an instant messenger is annoying and hard to use, it's easy to find a different platform that caters to your multimedia needs.

We can't say that we'll miss AIM, but we will never forget about it. After all that AIM did for us throughout the years, it would be a shame to discredit it and leave it to be forgotten. So let's enjoy our nostalgia and best AIM-related memories, and keep moving on.
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