Is Instant Messenger About To Fade Away?

IM has been supplanted by texting and a plethora of other keyboard-to-keyboard (and video) services.

The New York Times is reporting bad news for AOL Instant Messenger, aka AIM.

The AOL Instant Messenger group took the deepest cut so far. A former AOL employee said the group was “eviscerated and now only consists of support staff.” This person, who asked not to be named because they were not allowed to speak publicly about the company, added that “nearly all of the West Coast tech team has been killed.”

There was a time IM was so important there were legal challenges to AOL’s death grip on it! Now IM has been supplanted by texting and a plethora of other keyboard-to-keyboard (and video) services.

I still use Instant Messenger to speak to my friends Bob in Florida and Farrell in Afghanistan. I guess we’ll be forced to find a substitute. That shouldn’t be hard.

It’s sad to see the passing of a pioneer.

7 thoughts on “Is Instant Messenger About To Fade Away?”

  1. I still use it a ton for work-related communication and some personal. It’s not where it used to be, but I don’t think it’s going anywhere anytime soon.

  2. Facebook Messenger for Windows (stand-alone app outside the FB window) was released recently and should end up supplanting AIM soon. They simply make nothing off of it.

  3. I use AIM all day at work to keep in touch with friends and coworkers. Hope the reports of its demise are premature.

  4. Geoff, I have a friend who meets up with me on Yahoo Messenger and we help each other with moral support and family criseses, even to animal antics. I find it more private then talking aloud and hope Yahoo doesn’t give up having it. Yahoo lets you receive and leave offline messages, free, so it’s the only one I use.

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