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Pity. I spent many, many hours on AIM in my youth. Cultivated friendships, relationships, and many other one-off contacts. I suppose it has been made obsolete
by AdmiralAsshat 9y ago
Pity. I spent many, many hours on AIM in my youth. Cultivated friendships, relationships, and many other one-off contacts.
I suppose it has been made obsolete now by Facebook and other social media apps, but those were never truly replacements for AIM in my mind, as most of them have eschewed the venerable screen name in favor of your real name or e-mail address. And for the vast majority of people I talk to online, I don't want them to know my real name. I suppose I am simply a relic from another era.
At least IRC lives on.
- mirkules 9y agoFor me the killer feature of AIM was P2P file transfer. Is there even a service today that does this? It was so easy to just click "send a file" and it worked fairly reliably. Dropbox comes close, but, of course, it is not a direct file transfer.
- wlesieutre 9y agoYou can send files P2P using WebRTC. I've never used it, but https://www.sharedrop.io/ https://www.sharedrop.io/ came up in a quick search. For something more in the vein of AIM, pretty sure Skype lets you send files too.
- TheAceOfHearts 9y agoYes. Check out instant.io, it uses webtorrent, which is powered by webrtc. All major browsers should be supported. Just pick the file and link your friend.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- koyote 9y agoTelegram allows file transfer up to 1.5Gb. It's not P2P though.
- xioxox 9y agoIRC allows files to be sent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Client-to-Client https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Client-to-Client - it's not a great protocol however, particularly when used with firewalls.
- jandrese 9y agoIRC file transfer is always a roll of the dice if you're going through NAT.
- phit_ 9y agoSkype used to do P2P until like 2 years ago, now all files shared are uploaded to their servers.
- amiga-workbench 9y agoWe are sadly still using Skype at work, and due to the lack of P2P file transfer I'm really sketched out sending database dumps, certificates, and other sensitive content with it to colleagues.
- cbcoutinho 9y agoHmm I didn't notice there was a server in between the file transfer, looks like I'll have to reconsider how I transfer files
- autokad 9y agoi loved that feature. i remember sending a 3gb file over the network in just over a minute (early 2ks)
- KGIII 9y agoTox, like qTox supports file transfers. I can't say that I've used it, however.
- quotemstr 9y agoFB Messenger supports sending files
- rando444 9y agothat's not p2p file transfer.
- cbcoutinho 9y agoI send files during Skype conversations, so there's that. Sharing a Dropbox link to a file is also possible, but I always considered that clunky Edit: oops, I didn't know that Skype got rid of P2P, now files are uploaded to their servers
- ryandrake 9y agoIRC had this what, a decade before AIM even existed? I love reading about the great innovative features of the huge multitude of modern chat apps we have these days, which were present in software from the '90s. The more things change...
- dplgk 9y agoIRC UX is terrible
- mistersquid 9y agoAIM really was the gold standard for instant notifications and ambient signaling. Away messages were fantastic and if you stayed logged in, non-experts (normals) could disclose and see availability and time idle. The pseudonymous UIDs, AOL's chat rooms, contact management, image sharing, private messaging—this list of innovations introduced to mainstream users made AIM a giant success. Alas, AOL Instant Messenger cannot compete in the age of smartphones. One of my friends with whom I stayed touch first through AIM said > Somehow I really thought there would be an AIM > emoji <emoji of man running: UTF-8 \xf0\x9f\x8f\x83\xf0\x9f\x8f\xbb> I replied > If any service should have an emoji standard, it’s AIM. EDIT: formatting, spelling, sense, fix quote, punctuation, proper noun instead of pronoun
- dpark 9y agoUsing “code” indentation for quotes is completely unreadable on mobile. Just use asterisks to italicize.
- Stratoscope 9y agoAs dpark mentioned, code formatting doesn't work well for quotes here. I like to use this format which is about as good as we can do with the limited formatting options available here: > *A sentence or paragraph without line breaks.* > *Another paragraph of the quote*. The blank line keeps the paragraphs from running together. Since it's too late for you to edit, here's a mobile-friendly version of what your friend said: > Somehow I really thought there would be an AIM emoji <emoji of man running: UTF-8 \xf0\x9f\x8f\x83\xf0\x9f\x8f\xbb> and your reply: > If any service should have an emoji standard, it’s AIM.
- sarcasmic 9y agoOut of the western networks, Kik, Telegram, and Viber still do usernames. Kik, notably, still has a fairly laissez-faire culture and a userbase that skews young, which makes it the most comparable modern network to the feel of something like AIM in its heyday; with the difference that so many people having overlapping identities, discourse is now fragmented between various platforms for reasons more than just network effects.
- lightedman 9y agoTelegram requires a phone number even for the desktop app - that's just mind-boggling and a turnoff for me trying to move to a new service.
- sarcasmic 9y agoI should clarify, both Telegram and Viber allow usernames but require phone numbers for creation, and there's definitely an emphasis on phone numbers as the preferred identifier. Kik (and Snapchat, if I recall) are two of an increasingly thinning number of networks which operate on usernames only, and you can use without giving the provider (or anyone you're trying to chat with) your phone number.
- skinnymuch 9y agoHow popular is Kik really? Snapchat for all its hype has had growth slowed like crazy and is in the lower hundred millions.
- TheKarateKid 9y agoAgreed. Add to the fact that much like AIM back in the day, Kik is pretty craptastic compared to competing messaging apps. But, it's so fast and reliable that it makes it worth using.
- choko 9y agoICQ lives on as well, though not under the original management. The account I created in the 90s still works.
- j45 9y agoI have my ICQ id.. If only I could remember the password
- santaclaus 9y ago> I have my ICQ id The real important question is how many digits.
- _e 9y agoIf I recall correctly, six digit icq id's were selling for thousands of dollars.
- dexterdog 9y agoReally? I have a 6-digit one (below 250K actually). I just fired it up this morning for the first time in years after reading about AIM.
- listic 9y agoNah, $6+ if you buy in the right place. $300+ for 5-digits http://www.myuin.com http://www.myuin.com
- skinnymuch 9y agoI assume they were talking about in the past. Like a decade ago or earlier. Though 6 digit ones selling for thousands still seems a bit much unless they were appealing rounded numbers. 5 digits for thousands of dollars was def a thing in the mid 00s.
- 9y ago