> From the beginning of AOL there was instant messaging. Barry noticed that users had created scripts to query whether their friends were online or not. So he d

> From the beginning of AOL there was instant messaging. Barry noticed that users had created scripts to query whether their friends were online or not. So he decided we should just let them know all the time. He commissioned an initial version of the Buddy List, that worked within AOL. It didn’t scale well, though—we called it the Buggy List.