4 ms·

> I think it was mobile. Nothing really existed. But it would have been so easy to extend AIM and MSN Messenger to the mobile realm and carry along their hundr

> I think it was mobile. Nothing really existed. But it would have been so easy to extend AIM and MSN Messenger to the mobile realm and carry along their hundreds of millions of users. If they had mounted even a half-assed attempt at a trivial cost to their overall budgets they would have been unstoppable due to the network effect. The only way they could have failed is if they didn't try a mobile version at all -- that's the part I find so surprising.

PakG1 11y ago
None of those former chat companies (or parent companies) were mobile-focused at the time. Yeah, Microsoft had Windows CE, but they (like all other competitors) were unable to predict the monsters that iOS and Android would become and how much phones would change because of their ability to run big-feature 3rd-party software. So you have all these companies who don't expect phones to become powerful functional computers, seeing they have only crappy operating systems. Why would you make chat platforms for those crappy operating systems, especially when nobody saw any reason why SMS would die? Mobile bandwidth sucked too. Finally, in the case of Microsoft, if you're playing catchup, why make it for another platform instead of your own? You have to remember this is WAY before Microsoft changed its stripes and did things like release MS Office on iOS. In hindsight, it's all so obvious. I don't know many people who thought it was obvious at the time; yes, some people thought about it, but none of them did anything about it. I think a perfect storm of factors, including better mobile networks, better phone hardware, and new phone operating systems all collided to take everyone who was PC-centric by surprise.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Frankly both MS and Nokia was doing things with WCE/Mobile/Phone and Symbian that people are raving about doing today with iOS and Android. For example, i recall a video from a Symbian convention where Nokia was showing off a phone. It was hooked up to a TV, and had a keyboard and mouse paired. You could navigate the phone UI as if it was a computer, but also operate it as a phone at the same time. This was at a time when Android could barely do video out, and that would black out the built in screen for the duration. Similarly, MS were looking into selling WCE PDAs as cheap computers for the rural poor at one point. This by proving a way to hook up inputs and an analog video out (NTSC/PAL) so they could use an available TV as screen. Frankly to this day i am flabbergasted that iPhone got the attention it got. At launch there was no app store etc. The nearest thing you had to apps were special web sites that could leave a button in the phone's launcher. And they didn't even get a special instance of the browser, firing up one would clobber whatever you were browsing at the time. Instead the Jobs sales pitch was visual voice mail, anyone remember that one? I must really applaud whoever it was that managed to talk Jobs into not going sue happy on the jailbreakers, and instead co-opt their burgeoning apps ecosystem as Apple's own.
- Natanael_L 11y ago
  I anticipated it the moment I saw a Sony Ericsson P800i, a little over a decade ago. That one was a smartphone running Windows Mobile (not yet called smartphones back then). I saw a lot if this coming; GPS with location sharing, high speed mobile Internet, chat, video, handheld computers with full touchscreens, apps with custom advanced interfaces adapted for their own set of features. But back then I was teenager without the focus and motivation to learn programming, etc, so unfortunately I'm not much better off today for having spotted that trend early... If I had a time machine, I would have taken that time learning programming when I first thought about if I should or not (I guess I failed to anticipate the commercialization of it all!). On the other hand I've always been an early adopter with broad knowledge about everything technical, which is better than nothing.
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    Actually the P800 ran Symbian, using a UI called UIQ. And they were very much called smartphones back then. Hell, the media pundits had to contort the definition of the term massively so that the iPhone could fit for the first year or so.
imron 11y ago
That's the problem with incumbents, they are often slow to react to change and are so wrapped up in their own worldview that they can't see when a massive change is coming/has already occurred.
chrischen 11y ago
MSN messenger did have a mobile version. It was in the early days before Facebook messenger existed but it didn't work well because there was no way to do push notifications at the time. They killed it, but in my opinion they should have stayed course and pushed it through. None of the big chat networks (AIM, MSN) invested in converting to mobile for some reason. Either they were incapable or they bet on something else.
nemothekid 11y ago
>But it would have been so easy to extend AIM and MSN Messenger to the mobile realm and carry along their hundreds of millions of users. It was easy but no one did it. The only mobile device that did chat really well was the Sidekick. I owned one just because you could AIM/MSN on the go. However, (SMS) texting was so much easier and ubiquitous. For me, it went AIM -> SMS -> iMessage. In any case, by the time smartphones became mainstream enough where to have a chat experience that was something other than $PROTOCOL wrapped on top of SMS, the majority had already moved onto SMS.
rietta 11y ago
I used AIM big time on my T-Mobile sidekick. It's something Danger did very well.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Given that the sidekick/hiptop was heavily reliant on servers (frankly the phone was dumb as a brick if the Danger servers were down), likely what they did was run a proxy of sorts that handled the actual AIM connection. You could have something similar on IRC by running a bouncer on a shell account somewhere, and aiming your client at it rather than the IRC servers. The bouncer would then stay connected as long as the shell server was running, and log any activity on the channels.
smelendez 11y ago
I haven't thought about this in a long time, but Google also successfully wooed a lot of AIM users around the mid-2000s by integrating AIM sign-in into Google Talk. You could talk to your old AIM friends right from your Gmail tab, and your new friends probably had your Gmail address anyway, so you'd gradually stop giving out your AIM info at all...
digi_owl 11y ago
I think it was in part technical. Those networks were built when you were either online or offline. but with the phones you were kinda both. Note that the likes of Whatsapp only really happened after Apple introduced their push notification service. Thus allowing apps to behave comparably with SMS. Before that you basically had to keep the data connection going 24/7 for the likes of AIM to make sense on mobile.

PakG1 11y ago

None of those former chat companies (or parent companies) were mobile-focused at the time. Yeah, Microsoft had Windows CE, but they (like all other competitors) were unable to predict the monsters that iOS and Android would become and how much phones would change because of their ability to run big-feature 3rd-party software. So you have all these companies who don't expect phones to become powerful functional computers, seeing they have only crappy operating systems. Why would you make chat platforms for those crappy operating systems, especially when nobody saw any reason why SMS would die? Mobile bandwidth sucked too. Finally, in the case of Microsoft, if you're playing catchup, why make it for another platform instead of your own? You have to remember this is WAY before Microsoft changed its stripes and did things like release MS Office on iOS. In hindsight, it's all so obvious. I don't know many people who thought it was obvious at the time; yes, some people thought about it, but none of them did anything about it. I think a perfect storm of factors, including better mobile networks, better phone hardware, and new phone operating systems all collided to take everyone who was PC-centric by surprise.

digi_owl 11y ago
Frankly both MS and Nokia was doing things with WCE/Mobile/Phone and Symbian that people are raving about doing today with iOS and Android. For example, i recall a video from a Symbian convention where Nokia was showing off a phone. It was hooked up to a TV, and had a keyboard and mouse paired. You could navigate the phone UI as if it was a computer, but also operate it as a phone at the same time. This was at a time when Android could barely do video out, and that would black out the built in screen for the duration. Similarly, MS were looking into selling WCE PDAs as cheap computers for the rural poor at one point. This by proving a way to hook up inputs and an analog video out (NTSC/PAL) so they could use an available TV as screen. Frankly to this day i am flabbergasted that iPhone got the attention it got. At launch there was no app store etc. The nearest thing you had to apps were special web sites that could leave a button in the phone's launcher. And they didn't even get a special instance of the browser, firing up one would clobber whatever you were browsing at the time. Instead the Jobs sales pitch was visual voice mail, anyone remember that one? I must really applaud whoever it was that managed to talk Jobs into not going sue happy on the jailbreakers, and instead co-opt their burgeoning apps ecosystem as Apple's own.
Natanael_L 11y ago
I anticipated it the moment I saw a Sony Ericsson P800i, a little over a decade ago. That one was a smartphone running Windows Mobile (not yet called smartphones back then). I saw a lot if this coming; GPS with location sharing, high speed mobile Internet, chat, video, handheld computers with full touchscreens, apps with custom advanced interfaces adapted for their own set of features. But back then I was teenager without the focus and motivation to learn programming, etc, so unfortunately I'm not much better off today for having spotted that trend early... If I had a time machine, I would have taken that time learning programming when I first thought about if I should or not (I guess I failed to anticipate the commercialization of it all!). On the other hand I've always been an early adopter with broad knowledge about everything technical, which is better than nothing.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Actually the P800 ran Symbian, using a UI called UIQ. And they were very much called smartphones back then. Hell, the media pundits had to contort the definition of the term massively so that the iPhone could fit for the first year or so.

imron 11y ago

That's the problem with incumbents, they are often slow to react to change and are so wrapped up in their own worldview that they can't see when a massive change is coming/has already occurred.

chrischen 11y ago

MSN messenger did have a mobile version. It was in the early days before Facebook messenger existed but it didn't work well because there was no way to do push notifications at the time. They killed it, but in my opinion they should have stayed course and pushed it through. None of the big chat networks (AIM, MSN) invested in converting to mobile for some reason. Either they were incapable or they bet on something else.

nemothekid 11y ago

>But it would have been so easy to extend AIM and MSN Messenger to the mobile realm and carry along their hundreds of millions of users. It was easy but no one did it. The only mobile device that did chat really well was the Sidekick. I owned one just because you could AIM/MSN on the go. However, (SMS) texting was so much easier and ubiquitous. For me, it went AIM -> SMS -> iMessage. In any case, by the time smartphones became mainstream enough where to have a chat experience that was something other than $PROTOCOL wrapped on top of SMS, the majority had already moved onto SMS.

rietta 11y ago

I used AIM big time on my T-Mobile sidekick. It's something Danger did very well.

digi_owl 11y ago
Given that the sidekick/hiptop was heavily reliant on servers (frankly the phone was dumb as a brick if the Danger servers were down), likely what they did was run a proxy of sorts that handled the actual AIM connection. You could have something similar on IRC by running a bouncer on a shell account somewhere, and aiming your client at it rather than the IRC servers. The bouncer would then stay connected as long as the shell server was running, and log any activity on the channels.

smelendez 11y ago

I haven't thought about this in a long time, but Google also successfully wooed a lot of AIM users around the mid-2000s by integrating AIM sign-in into Google Talk. You could talk to your old AIM friends right from your Gmail tab, and your new friends probably had your Gmail address anyway, so you'd gradually stop giving out your AIM info at all...

digi_owl 11y ago

I think it was in part technical. Those networks were built when you were either online or offline. but with the phones you were kinda both. Note that the likes of Whatsapp only really happened after Apple introduced their push notification service. Thus allowing apps to behave comparably with SMS. Before that you basically had to keep the data connection going 24/7 for the likes of AIM to make sense on mobile.