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> or that time when half the internet switched to ICQ and I'm still not sure how it was better than AIM but I was convinced it was. Living in Europe, I never s
by yokoprime 5y ago
> or that time when half the internet switched to ICQ and I'm still not sure how it was better than AIM but I was convinced it was.
Living in Europe, I never saw the AIM client in use anywhere. I've never heard of anyone locally who used it. It was all ICQ, or later MSN / Skype.
- maxwell 5y agoOf course. "America" is in the name.
- julianlam 5y agoTechnically it isn't, since AIM is "AOL Instant Messenger", where AOL happens to also be an acronym, but it isn't America On-Line Instant Messenger, since then it'd be AOLIM.
- drusepth 5y agoI wonder if there's a word for these kinds of nested or multi-layer acronyms. Acronyms in acronyms.
- ModernMech 5y agoIt's like a recursive acronym with a base case, so it terminates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursive_acronym https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursive_acronym
- hoosieree 5y agoSomebody needs to make a recursive acronym in the shape of the Ackermann function.
- onaworkcomputer 5y agoIt's not recursive, though -- that would only be true if AOL stood for AIM On-Line. Maybe "nested acronym" is a better term?
- DougMellon 5y ago> Multi-layered acronyms: AIM: "AOL Instant Messenger," in which "AOL" originally stood for "America Online" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym
- smcl 5y agoAOL as an ISP existed in the UK at least, a couple of my friends used it and I had a bunch of the AOL discs for some reason (they came with PC Zone or PC Gamer magazines, maybe)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- INTPenis 5y agoI was a european who had AIM installed because I had a lot of interactions with Americans I had met on IRC. But here everyone was on ICQ, and then MSN Messenger. That's when I bailed.