Good point to mention that -- I agree BBM at the time was hobbled by the requirement to have a single brand of device. If your friends had all happened to have

Good point to mention that -- I agree BBM at the time was hobbled by the requirement to have a single brand of device. If your friends had all happened to have BlackBerries, I bet you'd have all used it. However, you point out that "that already existed" as AIM. I'd argue AOL similarly missed the opportunity for AIM. They ought to have, the day the App Store launched, immediately started a massive branding campaign to revitalize AIM, probably introduced purely phone-number-based accounts, the way Telegram and Whatsapp do, removing the "username creativity" barrier to entry for new users. Everyone in 2008 should have been immediately reminded: AIM is mobile now, it's completely free, shares media better than MMS, and works on every device with a data plan (BlackBerry, iPhone, Sidekick, Android, and ideally even those terrible flip phones with BREW apps). Note: I'm aware AIM was in the App Store right away. Their primary failures were in not winning over hearts and minds to actually use it on Mobile. I liked AIM and used it on my iPhone back then, but most of my Buddy List wasn't usually even online, because they didn't think of AIM as a mobile tool, it was for using on their laptop.