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AIM should have lasted forever | Version History

Channel: Version History · Duration: 59:03 · source

[00:00] In the mid-1990s, if you were online, [00:02] you were almost certainly using America online. [00:05] AOL was the internet for lots and lots of people. [00:08] But within AOL, there was this tiny team [00:11] that almost nobody wanted to exist [00:13] that was building an app that might someday [00:16] bring the best part of AOL outside the walled garden. [00:19] From The Verge and Vox Media, this is Version History, [00:21] a show about the best and worst and strangest [00:24] and most important products in tech history. [00:27] Today, we're talking, of course, [00:29] about AOL Instant Messenger. [00:31] All right, we're back. [00:42] Let's talk about the most important technology [00:45] in 13-year-old David Pierce's life, AOL Instant Messenger. [00:49] Vi Song is here. [00:49] Hi, Vi. [00:50] Hello. [00:51] And with us remotely, Kyle Chica. [00:52] Hi, Kyle. [00:53] Hey. [00:54] Thank you for doing this with us. [00:55] I've brought you both here [00:56] because you've both covered AIM a lot. [00:59] You've both expressed how deeply you miss AIM a lot. [01:03] And I think you're also both right in that sweet spot [01:06] of people to whom AIM was very important, [01:09] but maybe for slightly different reasons. [01:11] We're gonna get into a lot of this, [01:12] but the very first thing we need to talk about [01:14] is I need to know both of your AOL screen names. [01:17] This is the only thing I care about. [01:19] Vi, I know you had several. [01:21] I have three. [01:22] At various points. [01:23] I have three. [01:24] Walk us through the chronology here. [01:25] I believe I got AOL, my first AOL screen name. [01:28] I had a third or fourth grade. [01:29] And it was- [01:31] Oh, so you were like AOL, AOL. [01:32] I was AOL, AOL. [01:34] And it was Spice, 72440. [01:37] At the height of the Spice Girls. [01:39] Posh Spice was named Victoria [01:41] and she was the first cool non-villain Victoria like me. [01:45] So I latched on hard. [01:46] And then, you know, fast forward a few years. [01:50] I'm watching Toonami and Cartoon Network [01:52] and I love Gundam Wing and Hiroyui. [01:55] So my second one becomes Hiroyui 414 [01:58] because my birthday is April 14th. [02:00] And then my last one was Saiko Tanuki. [02:03] A Tanuki is a raccoon dog in Japanese culture [02:06] and Saiko means the best. [02:07] So I was the best raccoon dog. [02:09] There you go. [02:10] Okay, I love it. [02:11] Kyle, where do you is all over the place? [02:13] I think I only had two, [02:15] but it's like so deeply embarrassing. [02:17] So I'm just gonna dive right into it. [02:19] I think my first one was my name. [02:22] So it's just like Kei Chaka with some symbols on it. [02:25] But then I decided that it would be really cool [02:28] to take the name of a thief character [02:31] from a fantasy series that I was obsessed with as a kid. [02:36] And so that was a character named Silk, embarrassingly. [02:40] And then I added 15555 to the end of it. [02:45] And the fives. [02:46] That's a lot of fives, okay. [02:47] That's a lot of fives. [02:48] But where that came from was the MMORPG. [02:52] I was playing at the time called Ragnarok, [02:54] Ragnarok Online. [02:56] And there were a lot of Thai players on Ragnarok. [02:59] And in Thai, the five key is like the symbol for ha, [03:04] the sound ha. [03:05] So 55555 was like ha, ha, ha, ha. [03:08] And so everyone in the game [03:09] would just like spam five all the time. [03:12] And so I matched those two together. [03:15] That was my screen name. [03:16] And it has followed me through the rest of my life. [03:19] That's pretty good. [03:19] I like that. [03:20] So you both have much better stories than I do. [03:22] Mine is, I was an AIM kid, not an AOL kid. [03:25] So when I got onto AIM, [03:27] a bunch of my friends already had screen names. [03:30] And so what I did is like a deeply self-conscious, [03:33] whatever 13 year old, [03:34] was go look at all of my friends' screen names [03:37] and just copy it. [03:38] And what's funny is I realized in prepping for this, [03:40] I remember like a shocking number [03:42] of my friends' AIM screen names. [03:43] Like I could probably just sit here [03:45] and list you the 15 screen names [03:48] that I interacted with the most, which is nuts. [03:51] But anyway, the thing that a bunch of my friends did [03:53] was have like a word and then two numbers [03:56] both repeating once. [03:58] So I had like, my best friend growing up [04:00] was he was Jamman2288. [04:02] Why? [04:03] Don't know. [04:04] But that's what it was. [04:05] Because he liked Jammans. [04:06] Apparently. [04:06] And then there was one of my friends was Kayakerkid [04:08] and then he had numbers after it. [04:10] Everyone had numbers after that. [04:11] Being a 13 year old with no imagination or interests, [04:15] I was DaveP3355. [04:17] The numbers meant nothing. [04:19] And I just picked the least interesting possible. [04:21] And this is still a screen name [04:23] I use all over the internet. [04:24] I just, it was like a very business like, [04:26] I made a very professional screen name for AIM. [04:29] And I hate that about myself. [04:31] Maybe you were just ahead of the curve [04:32] because I think that's what we all do now as adults. [04:34] Because we can't use our fun handles [04:39] for emails that you're talking to someone over Verizon. [04:42] You're like, yes, my screen name is, [04:45] let me spell it out for you [04:46] because it's in Japanese from my, [04:49] middle school anime era. [04:51] Like, yeah. [04:52] It's very upset. [04:53] It is upset. [04:55] But just before we really dig into this, [04:57] I mean it sincerely when I say AIM was like central [05:00] to my life for a long period of time. [05:02] Was it as big a deal for both of you? [05:05] That's where all my social life happened [05:06] outside of like vague booking [05:09] before like vague Facebook statuses [05:12] where like AIM away statuses [05:14] where you're just zeroing in and it's like, [05:18] I'm gonna put in this Incubus lyric [05:20] and hope that my crush notices and asks me about it. [05:23] That's kind of like what AIM was for me. [05:26] It was like a bat signal. [05:27] Like you, you quote the lyrics, the Blink-182, [05:30] the Dave Matthews band, whatever. [05:33] You choose when to turn on and off the away message. [05:35] Like it was a real emotional communication system, [05:38] I think. [05:39] It really was. [05:40] And there were so many nuances to it [05:41] that I think kind of don't exist in a lot of ways now. [05:45] Like I think there are a lot of things in Snapchat [05:47] that have similar kind of games you can play [05:50] and little things that you do and don't do [05:52] and ways that you do stuff. [05:53] But there's really nothing in my life certainly [05:56] that I think about on as many levels [05:59] as I thought about my AIM experience back in the day. [06:02] But okay, let's rewind way back [06:04] and start the AIM story from the beginning. [06:07] And I think the way we have to do that [06:09] is to start by talking about AOL in the 90s. [06:13] So this is AOL, America Online, goes public in 1992. [06:16] This is like the early days of the internet, [06:18] the early days of anyone being online. [06:20] This is when the dot-com boom is really starting. [06:22] And in mid 1995, it had two and a half million users. [06:26] It had twice that a year later [06:28] and is like on its way to just being the internet [06:31] for lots and lots of people. [06:32] Like these numbers sound super small, [06:33] but I found a thing that said [06:34] the whole addressable internet market in 1995 [06:37] was estimated to be 10 million people. [06:39] That was the internet in 1995. [06:41] So a fifth of the people were on AIM at any given time. [06:44] Somewhere between, yeah, somewhere in the range [06:46] of like 20 to 50% of people who use the internet use AOL. [06:50] Like that's nuts. [06:52] A fun fact I learned in prep by the way [06:53] was that AOL was originally called [06:55] Quantum Computer Services, Inc. [06:56] And I have a hard time imagining [06:58] that Quantum Computer Services, Inc. Messenger [07:00] hits the same way that AIM does over time. [07:03] This is also like peak disk in the mail AOL. [07:07] We have a disk sitting here in front of us [07:09] that promises 500 hours of free AOL service. [07:12] The numbers were much less than 500 hours in the 90s, [07:15] but this was like a huge, huge thing. [07:19] And the important thing about AOL [07:20] was that it was a complete walled garden. [07:23] It was like one whole thought about the internet. [07:26] It was a lot of content bundled together [07:28] for a single monthly price. [07:30] They even compared themselves to cable TV, right? [07:32] It was cable TV for the internet. [07:34] All the stuff you want all for one monthly price. [07:36] And I found a really great wired story [07:37] from around this time that I'm just gonna read you [07:40] a quote from just to give you a sense of the scope of AOL. [07:43] It said, AOL is about pop culture, not pocket protectors. [07:46] Shrewed alliances with partners [07:48] ranging from the American Association of Retired Persons [07:50] to MTV have made AOL the service for every man. [07:53] You want information in quotes like a derogatory way? [07:57] Fine, check out CompuServe. [07:58] But if you want to swap opinions on Medicare cuts [08:00] or hang out with Courtney Love online, [08:02] AOL is the place to go. [08:04] Oh my God. [08:05] I do remember all those channels, [08:08] like the Games channel, the Kids channel, [08:10] you know, that was the internet at that point. [08:13] I lived in the Games and the Kids channels, [08:15] but I can't for the life of me remember the Games. [08:17] I just know I lived there. [08:18] Oh yeah. [08:19] And they were like, they would do a thing [08:20] where they would have a celebrity, [08:22] like Courtney Love is one example, [08:23] where they had lots of celebrities come [08:24] and just like hang out on AOL for a day, [08:27] which is like an insane thing to think about now. [08:30] Is that not just like the OnlyFans chat? [08:32] Oh no. [08:34] Yeah, it's like, oh, what if they were like, [08:35] oh, Olivia Rodrigo is gonna be on Twitter [08:38] today, he's like, what on earth are you talking about? [08:39] But this is what it was. [08:40] And at the time, the competition was [08:43] who else can build these big bundles of services, right? [08:47] So Microsoft was this huge looming competitor. [08:49] This is Microsoft, like pre antitrust, [08:51] pre all of the stuff that was gonna compete [08:54] with Microsoft, peak of its powers, [08:56] Windows, Bill Gates, Microsoft. [08:58] They were building a thing called the Microsoft network [09:00] and bundling it with Windows 95. [09:01] And AOL was really worried that this was gonna crush AOL [09:04] because it was just gonna be there on your computer [09:07] when you got it. [09:07] But we were at this moment where it was like, [09:09] okay, if you can make it easy for people to get online, [09:12] you can send them not on the internet, [09:15] but to your services. [09:16] And that's all the content, all the community, [09:18] all the places to hang out. [09:19] That's gonna be where the money is [09:21] and the success really is. [09:22] And at the same time, [09:24] there were these other instant messaging products [09:26] that were starting to grow fast. [09:27] ICQ was probably the biggest sort of mainstream one [09:31] right before AOL and AM took off. [09:33] I use mainstream in like the least mainstream kind of way. [09:37] I remember these alternatives too. [09:39] Like it was kind of said something about you, [09:41] which one you were on. [09:42] Yeah. [09:43] Like ICQ or ADM or all these different tools. [09:46] They were like clicks at school. [09:47] I went to nerd schools and like all, [09:50] I was on AM and they're like, [09:51] oh my God, you're so basic, [09:52] before basic was the word that we use. [09:54] It was like, the real fun is on ICQ. [09:56] And I was like, okay, whatever, bye. [09:58] The WhatsApp of its day. [10:00] It's just so much cooler. [10:01] When we told people we were doing this episode, [10:04] we heard from a lot of people who were like, [10:05] you better mention ICQ. [10:06] And it's like, oh, I know who the nerds are now. [10:09] We love you nerds, to be clear. [10:11] But anyway, so these things are starting to grow. [10:12] There's a bunch of them around, [10:14] but there was also this understanding that like, [10:15] okay, we think IM is going to be a big deal. [10:18] Like this seems like it's going to be a place [10:21] people want to be. [10:22] It's going to be a meaningful part of online connection, [10:25] but there aren't likely to be a lot of winners here [10:28] because like the, [10:29] we weren't talking about network effects at that point, [10:31] but it was the same sort of thing, right? [10:32] It's like, you're going to be where your friends are. [10:34] And if we can pull kind of a critical mass of people [10:37] and your friends into one place, [10:39] that thing is going to win [10:40] because it's where your friends are. [10:41] And this is like a huge advantage that AOL has [10:43] at this moment is it has centralized that [10:47] in a pretty unique way. [10:49] So that's kind of the backdrop to this story. [10:51] And the AM story really starts in about 1984. [10:55] And there's this AOL employee whose name is Barry Appelman. [10:58] And he builds a system for AOL itself [11:02] that shows which of your AOL friends are online. [11:05] So before this, if you wanted to see who was online, [11:08] you had to go and individually search for each person [11:11] you knew to see if they were online [11:12] and you could chat with them. [11:14] And Barry is like, well, what if there was just a list [11:17] of all of your buddies that showed [11:19] whether they were online? [11:21] And Barry, our, you know, smart friend [11:24] decides to call this thing the buddy list. [11:27] And he gets a patent for it. [11:28] And the idea you can see in these drawings [11:31] is A, these things just look like AOL chat, right? [11:35] It's just a simple messaging window, [11:36] but it's just a list of your friends [11:38] and whether they're online or not. [11:40] And this ends up being like revolutionary, right? [11:44] Like this is a real time status indicator for the internet [11:48] which like in most ways did not exist [11:51] for most people until now. [11:52] Was this like the cardinal sin of the internet though? [11:55] Like being able to tell when someone else is online? [11:59] Okay, this is actually one of my favorite [12:01] big picture questions about AIM [12:03] where it's like you could argue that AIM [12:05] was sort of a good thing that we should get back to, [12:08] but you could also argue that as soon as I knew [12:11] when you were on the internet, [12:12] everything immediately started to fall apart. [12:13] There's just like so much I'm feeling right now [12:16] looking at the buddy list. [12:18] How I used to organize my buddy list, [12:21] how I would categorize friends [12:23] and just going through puberty on AIM, [12:25] just staring at the name of the person you want to, [12:29] like I am you and just going like, [12:31] do I message them first? [12:33] What do I say? [12:34] And just staring at it and then they sign off [12:36] and you're like brokenhearted for no reason. [12:38] Well, do you remember you had to play games [12:39] about when you would and wouldn't sign on [12:42] because if you didn't want somebody to see [12:43] that you were online, [12:45] but you wanted to check to see if they were online, [12:46] like just the shenanigans that this requires [12:49] because you didn't have control [12:50] over whether you showed up online or not. [12:53] And this was the door sound, right? [12:54] There was the slamming door sound when someone logged off. [12:57] Okay, wait, let's just do this now. [12:58] I was gonna play this game with you in a minute, [13:00] but let's just do this now. [13:01] We're gonna play a game called What AIM Sound Is That? [13:03] I just have a few of them for you [13:04] and they're gonna make you feel [13:06] just a large number of feelings. [13:07] All right, let's do, [13:09] I believe I have five or six of these for you. [13:11] I'm gonna play the sound [13:12] and you're gonna tell me what the sound represents. [13:14] You ready? [13:17] Oh, they're on. [13:18] Getting online. [13:19] That's correct. [13:20] That's the login. [13:23] You got a message or? [13:25] Close. [13:27] Oh, it's so. [13:30] This is the conversation start noise. [13:33] This is the first message from somebody is that noise. [13:37] And then. [13:39] You sent a message. [13:41] Almost. [13:45] That's the you've received a message. [13:46] You've received a message. [13:47] So, okay, here, just to give this one away, [13:49] here's the opposite. [13:51] That's you've sent a message. [13:52] That's you've sent a message. [13:54] Sent. [13:56] Received. [13:57] It goes up, out and down. [13:58] I am ratatouilleing into that moment [14:01] of just like a 40 minute conversation I had with my bestie [14:04] where we were just sending the same [14:06] like unamused emoji back and forth for 40 minutes [14:09] just trying to see who would like, [14:11] oh God, it's taking me back. [14:14] All right, I have just a couple more. [14:17] That's the getting offline. [14:19] This I think may be the greatest sound [14:20] in the history of the internet. [14:22] Like it's perfect. [14:23] Like it explains itself immediately. [14:25] I love it so much. [14:26] For me, nothing, nothing did it quite like [14:28] the sign off sound, the door slamming. [14:31] Just nothing like it. [14:33] And you haven't even gotten a chance to message them yet. [14:35] You're waiting and waiting and waiting. [14:37] Or you message them and immediately that sound happens. [14:39] Oh, devastated. [14:41] Oh, that's happened to me before. [14:41] Devastated. [14:43] So, Barry Appelman makes this buddy list pattern [14:47] and just kind of ships it. [14:49] Puts it onto AOL. [14:50] A thing that is really important to understand [14:52] about AOL at the time is it is this [14:54] massively successful, relatively small. [14:57] And as far as I can tell, essentially anarchist company. [15:01] Like nobody is paying attention to anybody. [15:03] You can essentially build something [15:05] and ship it to the finished product. [15:07] It is just a bunch of people doing things. [15:11] And this is to some extent like a leadership failure [15:13] but also to some extent like just the culture [15:15] of the company at this point. [15:16] This stuff is so new and it's moving so fast [15:18] that engineers kind of up and down the stack [15:21] have permission to just make and ship things. [15:23] And make and ship things becomes kind of the ethos [15:26] of AAM over time in a really interesting way. [15:28] So, he ships the buddy list to AOL. [15:30] It immediately becomes a huge hit. [15:31] This is like a big part of this sort of AOL experience [15:35] for lots of people after that. [15:36] And then a couple of years after that, [15:38] there's this little skunk work scheme inside of AOL [15:41] that starts working on a version of the messaging chat app [15:47] that explicitly works outside of AOL, the walled garden. [15:51] Their thesis was basically like this thing really matters. [15:55] We think this is actually maybe the stickiest thing [15:57] about AOL. [15:59] Can we use it to bring more people into the fold? [16:01] Like can this be the sort of gateway drug [16:04] into the rest of AOL? [16:06] Maybe if the chat thing happens [16:07] you're gonna want more services. [16:09] You're gonna wanna be part of this. [16:10] The theory kind of makes sense. [16:12] It absolutely is proven wrong by where the story goes. [16:16] But you can sort of see the theory at the time. [16:17] And they start building a thing [16:20] that ends up being called AOL, it's a messenger, right? [16:22] So, they build this app. [16:23] It's just a few people for a few weeks [16:26] just kind of building this thing out. [16:28] And their big idea was we wanna build a chat system [16:31] that can handle five million simultaneous users, right? [16:33] So, they have a sense, again, this is at a moment [16:35] when like five million people is a reasonably large portion [16:39] of the internet. [16:40] And they're like, we think this is going to be huge. [16:42] We wanna put it in front of more people. [16:44] They show it to executives and executives hate it. [16:48] Like immediately the reaction within the AOL leadership [16:51] is like, why on earth would we take our best, [16:53] most popular feature that everyone logs onto [16:55] and uses all day every day and just give it to everybody? [16:59] So, they shut it down. [17:00] They say, no, you can't do this. [17:02] And they ship it anyway. [17:03] They just, this is what I mean by the AOL culture. [17:05] They were like, they were told we don't care about this. [17:08] We're not gonna do this. [17:09] And what this team does instead is they just put it [17:14] on an FTP server that AOL owns, [17:17] which is just a list of AOL files. [17:20] And ordinarily you could do something like that [17:23] and it would probably be unnoticed [17:25] except for like a very small number of people. [17:26] And like, I think what they were probably hoping for [17:29] is this thing sort of trickles out [17:31] and people start to use it [17:32] and we have this new messenger and it's very exciting. [17:34] But AOL is AOL. [17:35] And one way to track AOL at the time [17:38] was to keep track of its FTP servers. [17:40] Like that was a way people kept tabs on what AOL was up to. [17:44] And so there were a bunch of people watching. [17:46] Like the power users are aware of what's going on [17:49] in this FTP server. [17:50] And the minute it goes up, [17:51] there's not even a download page on AOL's website [17:54] for AOL as a messenger. [17:55] It's just a file on a server. [17:57] The night it goes up, [17:59] 900 people simultaneously start using it. [18:01] This is the immediate number. [18:04] 900 people download it and start chatting [18:06] on AOL as your messenger. [18:07] And somehow the part of this story [18:10] that makes the least sense to me [18:11] is at no point does anyone ever show up [18:14] and kill this project. [18:15] Like over and over, there are people who in theory [18:19] had the power, like Steve Case, the CEO of AOL [18:21] could have just walked in and been like, [18:22] you're all fired, we're shutting this down. [18:25] But they didn't do that. [18:25] They just sort of let this project go. [18:27] And I think AOL, I guess had bigger fish to fry [18:31] or just didn't care or whatever. [18:32] But they start fighting two fights simultaneously. [18:36] One is to keep up with the growth of this thing, [18:37] which takes off basically immediately [18:39] because anything AOL did, [18:41] especially outside of the wall garden [18:42] was obviously big news. [18:43] So this becomes a thing pretty quickly. [18:45] And then internally, there's this small team [18:47] of people basically trying to make sure [18:50] that the AIM team is either not noticed [18:53] or by some miracle allowed to keep working. [18:55] And I found this great quote from Eric Bosco [18:57] who was part of that team. [18:59] He said, my biggest job as a manager [19:00] was to keep AIM alive internally [19:02] because every single executive vice president [19:04] wanted to shut it down and kill it. [19:05] They could not understand the concept [19:07] of giving away for free something that was of real value [19:09] to the paying subscriber base. [19:10] It was always AIM versus AOL. [19:12] They hated us. [19:14] And yet, they didn't kill it. [19:18] None of this makes any sense to me. [19:19] But anyway, here's where we are. [19:21] AIM starts to come out, starts to grow, [19:23] and there start to be a few things [19:26] that really make a take off. [19:27] I have a list here of when I look back [19:29] what I think were like the things that made [19:32] AIM special and different. [19:34] But I'm curious what the two of you think. [19:36] Individual features, that you're like, [19:38] this made it special at the time. [19:40] Obviously, the buddy list is thing number one, right? [19:42] That was like, fun fact, the very first web page [19:45] that existed for AIM was AOL.com slash buddy list, [19:49] which is just a sign of how they understood this thing. [19:51] But when you guys think about the sort of features [19:54] of AIM that made it different [19:55] from whatever we had tried before, [19:56] what immediately comes to mind? [19:58] Wallpapers. [20:00] Okay. [20:01] So one of my friends was obsessed with lobsters. [20:05] So she just had a lobster wallpaper, I think, [20:08] and a lobster emoji that she would send [20:10] to all of her friends as soon as she got online. [20:13] So it would be the lobster emoji [20:14] and then the word lobster. [20:17] And like, because she would say this in real life too. [20:19] So it's just peak kid. [20:22] So when I think of- [20:23] I have a lot of questions about this, Fred, but okay. [20:24] She's a doctor now. [20:26] Aren't they all? [20:27] You know what I mean? [20:28] She's a doctor now, very smart, about to have a kid. [20:31] And she would just go online and everyone would know [20:34] because she would be like, lobster. [20:36] And we would just send lobster, [20:39] like, ASCII emojis back and forth. [20:42] The ASCII emoji, I feel like it's all [20:45] about the customization. [20:46] Like, you express yourself through your away message [20:50] and the emoji is used and it felt like a way [20:54] to put your personality online for the first time. [20:57] The Kirby dance. [20:58] So do you want to know a fun fact about this, [20:59] by the way, there's a lot of things about AIM [21:02] that are built because of the constraint [21:05] of no one else at the company cared about it. [21:07] So the AIM team had this idea of like, [21:09] you should have a profile page, right? [21:12] This is like, you should be able to sort of click [21:14] on something and go to their AIM profile. [21:16] This is again, another way to get people [21:17] into the AOL walled garden. [21:19] They're like, okay, people will chat [21:20] and then they'll want to learn more about each other [21:21] and they'll go to their AOL profile. [21:24] The AOL team says, absolutely not, not gonna do this. [21:26] So they build it into the app. [21:28] So the fact that you could open up [21:29] that little separate window [21:31] that would show their profile and their away message, [21:33] they didn't want to build it like that. [21:35] They just had no other place they could put it. [21:37] And they started doing a bunch of stuff, [21:40] again, inside of the app because they weren't allowed [21:42] to do it outside of the app. [21:43] And so by sort of pushing this thing further [21:46] and further away from AOL, [21:48] AOL actually took away all of the advantages [21:50] that it might have brought AOL over time. [21:53] So it's like more self-contained. [21:55] I remember it feeling like that. [21:56] Like you could just be within AIM [21:59] and not have to go elsewhere, [22:00] not go into the wider internet. [22:02] Like your whole experience was right there. [22:04] Yeah, that's exactly right. [22:05] They had an idea that sort of would have looked [22:09] like Facebook profiles, I think is kind of the way [22:11] I think about it now. [22:12] That it's like you would have been able to chat [22:13] with somebody and then click out to their profile. [22:14] And imagine if that's like AOL.com slash their screen name. [22:17] That becomes like a powerful way into AOL. [22:20] And they just didn't want to do it. [22:22] They were just out. [22:23] But what this all meant was the AIM team [22:24] could just keep shipping stuff without approval. [22:27] And so they couldn't even update the download page [22:30] on AOL.com. [22:31] So they started to make the app update in place [22:35] rather than having to like all kinds of stuff [22:37] that is like AIM became its own world [22:40] because AOL wouldn't let it do anything with AOL. [22:43] Which winds up being like the worst decision [22:46] AOL could have possibly made. [22:48] But anyway, so I think the only other thing [22:50] I would add is I think, [22:51] and we talked about this a little bit, [22:52] is I think the online status indicators [22:54] were a really big deal. [22:57] And the way that it felt real time [23:00] in a way that very few other chat systems had [23:03] was a big deal. [23:05] It also had the Running Man logo, [23:08] which was just the greatest logo of all time. [23:10] That has nothing to do with anything. [23:11] I just love it very much. [23:12] It kind of reminds me of my favorite internet phrase ever, [23:15] which is AFK. [23:16] Yes. [23:17] I'm like you would put in AFK away from keyboard [23:20] to your away message or chat to someone [23:24] to say that I am going offline. [23:26] Like I am away from the internet [23:28] because I have to, I don't know, [23:30] do my homework or talk to my parents. [23:32] Because the internet was like a thing [23:34] in the middle of the house that you had to go to. [23:36] This is a thing people forget is like it was, [23:40] the internet was a place in your home [23:42] that you had to go and sit down [23:44] and take away from somebody else. [23:45] And like I wanted to be on AIM [23:47] but my sister had to do homework [23:48] and my dad had to do work. [23:49] So I couldn't be online anymore. [23:51] So you have to tell your friends don't message me [23:53] or else my parents will read it. [23:55] This is unfathomable in today's world [23:58] but this is what it was like. [24:00] So we all had to learn how to deal with that. [24:01] Did you ever do the, I think, [24:04] what was it, POS, the parent over shoulder? [24:06] Like my parents in the room don't say anything crazy. [24:08] Oh no. [24:09] Whoa, that's subtle. [24:11] My dad was very keen on all of us [24:12] having like our separate ways into the internet. [24:15] So he had his computer [24:16] and sometimes I had to use his computer. [24:18] And at that point I was like on dad's computer. [24:22] But like once I got my own laptop off [24:24] that ruined everything for my mental health. [24:28] Yeah, that's fair. [24:29] In perpetuity. [24:30] So okay, so the thing that was most surprising to me [24:32] about this moment in AIM [24:34] is the first group of people it took off with was companies. [24:39] It became this huge business hit [24:42] because all of these businesses [24:44] were starting to come online [24:45] and email worked but was too slow [24:47] and they suddenly built this tool [24:49] that would let me talk to people on the internet [24:51] in something like real time. [24:53] So it became a huge hit inside of companies [24:55] and immediately starts this whole like cultural kerfuffle. [24:59] And Kyle, this is kind of what you were talking about earlier. [25:01] They're all these stories from like the 90s. [25:04] Like when this is first starting to come out [25:05] where it's like maybe it's a bad thing [25:07] that we all know when everyone else is online [25:09] and we can all chat to each other in real time [25:12] and we're developing expectations [25:13] that the other person will get back to me just as fast. [25:16] And like again, this is stuff we're reckoning with now. [25:20] Slack is the same thing. [25:21] Exactly. [25:22] So are you telling me that because of AIM, [25:24] I now have Slack? [25:26] Yes, in a super real way. [25:28] Cool, very, God damn it. [25:31] Like using emoji to signal your status [25:34] is what, 20 plus years old now? [25:38] Or no 30 at most, I guess. [25:40] To that end, the away message [25:42] was actually a corporate creation [25:45] because people started demanding away [25:47] to be like I need to let people know [25:48] that I'm not here. [25:49] Like this is driving me crazy. [25:51] I technically am online, but I'm not here. [25:54] How do I tell people I'm away from my computer? [25:57] And they built the away message for people at work, [26:00] which is like insane to teenage me [26:03] who just wanted to use this to like flirt with girls. [26:06] But that's what it was. [26:07] So it becomes this work tool [26:09] and AOL briefly looks at this and goes, [26:11] okay, there's something here. [26:12] Let's try and make money off of it. [26:14] And so tries to like, they partnered with Netscape [26:18] to put Netscape, they built a product [26:20] that was called Netscape's AOL Instant Messenger. [26:23] That's great. [26:23] That's catchy. [26:24] Rolls right off the top. [26:25] Yeah, built into the Netscape Navigator browser. [26:27] They had some ideas about like, okay, [26:28] maybe there is a real corporate product here, [26:30] but none of that stuff ever really went anywhere [26:33] because AOL's cash cow was the like culture thing [26:38] and that was all they actually cared about. [26:39] So meanwhile, the AOL team, the aim team inside of AOL [26:42] just keeps shipping and making stuff. [26:44] This thing starts growing. [26:45] It grows really, really fast. [26:46] They start adding tons of features. [26:48] It had voice chat really early on. [26:49] You could send each other files really early on. [26:52] It had chat bots. [26:53] So this thing launches in 1997, right? [26:56] And by 2001, aim has many, many, many millions of users. [27:01] I've seen numbers as high as 100 million users. [27:03] I've seen numbers as high as 60 million users, [27:06] like somewhere in that range. [27:07] And again, this is a moment where like people [27:10] are just coming online in droves, right? [27:13] Like the sort of total addressable market [27:14] of the internet is expanding super, super fast at this point, [27:17] but aim is just eating that market share. [27:20] Like people were coming online in many ways [27:23] to use aim to talk to their friends. [27:24] Like it becomes the gateway to the internet [27:26] for a lot of people in a really real way. [27:29] And as it does, [27:30] competitions are to show up super fast. [27:32] Yahoo launches Yahoo Messenger. [27:34] Microsoft launches a messenger that, you know, [27:37] probably some people use by accident. [27:39] I'm kidding, MSN was huge at the time. [27:40] We were all using it. [27:42] It was the like formative experience for people. [27:47] And then aim starts to die because AOL turns around [27:50] and finally decides to kill it. [27:52] And we're gonna get to what happened. [27:53] But first, let's take a quick break. [27:54] We'll be right back. [27:59] All right, we're back. [28:00] I have terrible news for both of you. [28:02] AOL is about to try and kill aim. [28:03] So 2001, peak of aims powers. [28:06] We're all using aim. [28:07] Aim is very important. [28:08] Kyle is just sitting at his family's computer [28:10] just aiming away all day, every day. [28:12] This is what I assume. [28:13] Absolutely. [28:14] Okay, who is your number one aim friend? [28:16] Let's call them out right now. [28:17] Who did you talk to the most? [28:18] Oh man. [28:19] A friend of mine named Parker [28:21] who was like equally as online as I was at that time [28:25] which was like not a cool time to be super online. [28:28] But she would like build websites and stuff. [28:30] And so we chatted a lot. [28:32] All right, chats to Parker. [28:33] Love this. [28:34] All right, so again, 2001 aim is huge. [28:37] 2002 AOL starts laying off the aim team. [28:42] There was a brief period where this thing was so big [28:45] that AOL is like, okay, we're gonna do ads on this thing [28:47] because that's a business we can do, right? [28:49] There was one moment where it was like [28:51] we can take our sort of core competency [28:53] which is advertising on the internet and pull it into aim. [28:57] They tried to do it. [28:58] It just didn't work. [29:00] And for a bunch of reasons, right? [29:02] Like people have tried to do ads in chat many times [29:04] since and it turns out it's just a kind of [29:06] gross experience. [29:07] People don't like it. [29:09] Advertisers don't like it because it's like, [29:11] imagine what we're talking about in aim [29:14] and you're just gonna put like your pizza ads next to it. [29:17] Like people just don't want that. [29:19] So this thing starts to go away. [29:21] The corporate version of it that AOL builds [29:24] doesn't really go anywhere because aim exists [29:25] and people are happy to use aim as it exists. [29:28] A fun fact I learned again about [29:30] the constraints breeding interesting things. [29:32] Do you remember that when you would open up aim [29:34] you had to sometimes select which port [29:37] it would use to connect? [29:38] No. [29:39] There was like a brief Kyle's nodding. [29:41] Yeah. [29:42] So AOL, there were like a lot of technical limitations [29:46] to the internet at this point. [29:47] And one thing that aim built for itself [29:50] was basically it would automatically hunt [29:53] for a port to use in order to be able to be used. [29:55] And they did this because companies didn't like [29:58] all of the like time that was being wasted on aim [30:01] and all the sensitive data that was being shared in aim. [30:03] So they started trying to block aim [30:06] but the aim team built essentially [30:08] a thing that would just hunt for an open port [30:10] in your network until it found one. [30:12] And so it made aim essentially unblockable [30:14] and unkillable inside of companies. [30:16] Such a pirate ship. [30:18] It really was. [30:18] I kind of love their vibes. [30:20] That's just rebels. [30:21] Yeah, it really was. [30:22] But so in 2002 the aim team is about 100 people [30:25] which is like nothing. [30:27] The company this always reminds me of is WhatsApp [30:29] which is like WhatsApp took over the world [30:30] with like 40 engineers. [30:32] Aim did essentially the same thing with about 100 people. [30:35] But then in 2002 AOL starts to lay this team off [30:38] kind of bit by bit year after year. [30:41] This is also the moment where like a new generation [30:44] of stuff starts to come up. [30:46] Kyle, you've kind of written about this transition [30:48] in your own life. [30:49] So I'm curious how you think about [30:50] what was happening right around that time. [30:52] Because this is like the beginning of social networking. [30:54] It's the beginning of text messaging. [30:56] Like all this stuff that would be the new way [30:58] we communicate was like just starting to happen [31:01] as AOL is just starting to kill aim. [31:03] Totally, it's like AIM created. [31:06] I have to like take a break for a second [31:08] because I always grew up saying AIM. [31:11] It was never AIM. [31:14] I do think both are correct. [31:15] I have heard people say AIM and I have no problem with it. [31:18] It was like a tomato, tomato, you know, [31:20] soda pop thing AIM versus AIM. [31:23] So I just naturally say AIM. [31:25] Anyway, AIM evolved this whole culture [31:28] of like real time messaging and statuses [31:31] and ASCII emojis and stuff. [31:33] And then I feel like that just bled everywhere else, [31:35] particularly among teenagers. [31:37] Like as we got phones that could do SMS text messages [31:42] and we got onto places like MySpace [31:46] where you could also sort your friends [31:47] and express yourself in a much more multimedia way. [31:51] But I think like it lost that kind of intimacy. [31:54] Like AIM was about just connecting [31:57] to those few handfuls of people who are right around you. [32:00] And that like scaled up so much [32:02] that all of a sudden we were exposed to the wider internet [32:06] and could like, I don't know, [32:07] reach a lot more strangers a lot more directly. [32:11] Yeah, yeah, it does seem like I was trying to remember this [32:13] and I think my friend group went pretty straight [32:18] from AIM to texting. [32:22] And then it wasn't really until like Facebook messaging [32:27] became a big thing that we switched. [32:29] Like I think a lot of people in this era [32:31] sort of switched to G-chat and like we used G-chat some. [32:34] But the thing on G-chat was like, [32:35] if you had my email address, you could message me. [32:38] And we didn't have the sort of two way [32:40] buddy list authentication thing that it was like, [32:43] that was like a feature of AIM [32:45] that was weird for a long time. [32:46] You could message anybody, [32:48] but then they started to have more restrictions on it. [32:50] One fun thing about AIM by the way, [32:52] one of the great features that everybody [32:53] should continue to do is you could warn somebody on AIM. [32:57] Do you guys remember this? [32:58] If somebody was harassing you [32:59] or you wanted to just stop them for whatever reason, [33:02] there was a warn button. [33:03] And if you warned them enough times, [33:05] it would actually start to slow down [33:07] their internet connection. [33:09] Wow. Do you remember this? [33:10] This is one of the great features of all time. [33:13] It would actually start to throttle their connection [33:16] to the service and eventually kick them off. [33:18] So like the penalty for being bad on AIM [33:20] was that eventually you would get kicked off of it [33:22] by the internet. [33:24] That rules. [33:26] This is like PVP, like warfare online. [33:29] Seriously. [33:29] I should have used that against duo Maxwell [33:32] some sort of number that the weird harasser I had [33:36] because I had a Gundam wings screen name, Jesus. [33:39] All right, but so anyway, so at this point, [33:41] this is really, there's not that much more [33:42] AIM story left, right? [33:44] AIM sticks around for 15 more years, [33:46] but in more or less irrelevancy, right? [33:50] They eventually ship AIM for mobile. [33:53] They ship an AIM app that's trying to do web stuff [33:56] kind of like G-chat was back in the day. [33:58] They ship AIM pages, [33:59] which is essentially MySpace profiles. [34:01] But at this point, there's kind of nothing. [34:04] It's just there's the cache is gone, right? [34:05] Everybody has moved on to other services [34:08] and other systems and other products. [34:10] And AIM just kind of dwindles all the way into 2012. [34:14] There are people still working on it at the company, [34:17] but by 2012, they sort of rip out the last of the staff [34:20] and all that's left is like a support staff. [34:23] No one is left actually building AOL and some messenger. [34:26] And then in December of 2017, it goes offline for real. [34:31] And this was one of the funniest moments for me [34:34] on the internet where no one had talked about AIM [34:37] for 10 years. [34:39] And then all of a sudden, [34:40] they announced that AIM is going offline [34:41] and everybody's like, well, A, that makes perfect sense. [34:44] I kind of thought AIM had gone offline a long time ago. [34:46] But B, oh my God, the number of feelings [34:48] this is making me feel like we now need to talk about it. [34:50] So like, I think all three of us wrote stories [34:53] about the end of AIM and how sad it is. [34:56] There's also the era of tech blogging too. [34:59] It was. [35:00] It really was. [35:01] A different internet that had rewarded all of us [35:04] for being more online than our friends. [35:05] Yeah, very much so. [35:08] That was our, the seeds of our early success [35:10] was being too obsessed with the way messages. [35:13] Yeah, so Kyle, we've talked a little bit [35:15] about the influence of it [35:16] because I think there is a lot of AIM vibes [35:21] still in the internet that we use. [35:24] How do you look at it? [35:25] Like, where do you see AIM in the internet we're still on? [35:29] DMs, like Instagram DMs are really close, [35:33] like at least emotional equivalent to AIM at this point. [35:37] It's like where you actually talk to people you know [35:39] and you might have like more in-depth [35:41] or intimate conversations. [35:44] That definitely feels like one place. [35:46] And texting, I mean to me group chat culture, [35:50] like friends thread culture is kind of underrated [35:53] just as an influence and a force in the world. [35:57] And that's a huge part of AIM. [35:59] Like that's where we learn to talk to each other [36:02] in that way and like have group conversations [36:05] and reply to each other and all of that stuff. [36:07] One of my favorite things about the internet [36:09] is I firmly believe you can still tell [36:11] who grew up on AIM based on the length of messages [36:15] that they send. [36:16] Like if you were on AIM, the unofficial rule of AIM [36:19] was one thought per message, right? [36:20] That it was like if you typed a multi-sentence AIM message, [36:24] you were absolutely out of your mind. [36:25] Like that was a cry for help in ways [36:28] that I'm not even prepared to litigate now. [36:29] So it was basically one clause per message. [36:33] And there are now people who still type like that [36:35] in Slack, which in a professional setting [36:38] is like unhinged, but it's like it's what we do [36:41] because this is how we learned how to type [36:43] and talk on the internet. [36:43] It's a stream of consciousness. [36:45] Right, anytime you were going to punctuate, [36:47] what you do instead is hit enter. [36:49] Yeah, no, I am so guilty of that. [36:51] I am the guiltiest of that. [36:53] And you know, I've had people be like, [36:54] could you just type out your whole thought and I'm like, no. [36:57] But if you were, if you're a little older [36:58] and your formative experience was like early days [37:00] of email when everything was much slower [37:03] and much more asynchronous, [37:04] you learned how to write longer things. [37:07] But you know, that's also infuriating [37:10] as someone who has grown up on AIM [37:12] because I just see them typing forever [37:13] and I'm like, I don't have any clue [37:15] what it is that you're typing. [37:16] Is it good, is it bad? [37:17] Just hit enter so I can have the, so yeah, yeah. [37:21] So one fun thing that I found about AIM and its legacy [37:25] is I was trying to figure out like how much [37:28] of the sort of next generation of services [37:32] came directly from people's experience on AIM. [37:34] And the answer turns out to be tons of it. [37:36] Like here's Jack Dorsey for on Joe Rogan's podcast [37:40] talking about the inspirations for Twitter. [37:43] We got more of our roots from AO and messenger and ICQ. [37:48] Because it was, you know, you remember the status message [37:52] where you said like, I'm in a meeting [37:53] or I'm listening to this music [37:54] or I'm watching a movie right now. [37:56] That was the inspiration. [37:58] And what we took from that was being able to like, [38:00] if you could do that from anywhere, [38:01] not bound to a desk, but you could do that from anywhere [38:03] and you could do it from your phone [38:04] and you could just be roaming around and say, [38:07] you know, I'm at Joe Rogan's studio right now. [38:10] That is cool. [38:11] I don't need my computer. [38:12] I'm not bound to this and chained to this desk. [38:14] I can do it from anywhere. [38:16] I think Jack Dorsey may have fundamentally underestimated [38:19] how big a change that would turn out to be. [38:22] The other thing he said, and this is to your point, [38:23] Kyle, earlier, is that they wanted to do it in public, [38:26] right, like not only can you do it from anywhere, [38:28] but everyone can see your away message. [38:30] And he was like, this will be a good thing, [38:34] deeply debatable. [38:35] There was also Mark Zuckerberg in 2017. [38:37] Here's a post he wrote. [38:38] He said, my friends and I spent a lot of time [38:39] curating our online identities. [38:41] We spent hours finding quotes for our aim profiles [38:43] that expressed how we felt and we picked [38:44] just the right font and color for our messages [38:46] to signal what we wanted about ourselves. [38:48] I built a tool that let me send messages [38:49] with the letters fading between any colors I wanted. [38:51] It was simple, but it was fun to build [38:53] and it made my messages look different. [38:54] He talked a lot about how inspirational he found aim, [38:59] but then again, said the same thing about like, [39:01] I wanted this to be more customizable and more public [39:03] in front of other people. [39:04] And that, I don't think anybody understood [39:06] how big a shift that thing was going to be at the time. [39:09] I mean, the Facebook status was another great container [39:12] of emotional expressiveness. [39:15] That kind of took up where the away message left off. [39:18] And then like when they resurfaced the memories [39:20] and there was like, obviously that shift from [39:23] like your name is and then the status. [39:26] And then now you look back on that [39:28] on the time machine stuff and you're like, [39:29] this makes no sense grammatically [39:31] based on like what status are now. [39:33] Yes. [39:34] All right, so we need to take right. [39:35] And Kyle, you need to go, [39:36] but I just have one more question for you [39:38] before we let you get out of here. [39:39] Do you think we miss aim or do we miss like that era [39:44] of simpler times on the internet? [39:45] The nostalgia for teenage years. [39:47] To some extent, those two things [39:49] are kind of inextricable, right? [39:50] But like when we look back at aim, [39:51] is it aim or is it like what it was like [39:54] to be that age at that time on the internet? [39:56] No, I have a new found respect for just aim itself. [40:00] Like this kind of limited one-to-one communication mechanism. [40:05] I think people are still trying to reinvent that [40:07] over and over and over again, including Jack Dorsey. [40:11] And we're trying to like rebuild that culture [40:12] of just talking to our friends online. [40:15] And we go through like cycles of [40:17] we want to talk to tons of people. [40:18] We want to talk to very few people and back and forth. [40:22] So yeah, I kind of feel like if you could do it again [40:25] now, it would still be really popular and cool [40:27] if you could get that uptake and expressiveness into it. [40:31] V, what do you think? [40:32] Yeah, I think the whole everywhere all the time, [40:36] like the slackness of it really gives me anxiety. [40:39] But I miss aim because it was a time [40:42] and a place after school. [40:44] It was like three to five PM, really, you know? [40:47] Like that was a time and a place. [40:49] It was people, there was like a specific culture to it. [40:52] There was deciphering away messages. [40:54] There was a feeling to it that didn't feel corporate. [40:57] So maybe a little bit of nostalgia for that time in my life, [41:01] but that was an awkward ass anxiety-ridden time [41:04] of my life too. [41:05] I just think aim made it more, less lonely and more fun. [41:11] And I miss my friends in the Philippines [41:13] whose names I don't remember because it's been 20 years. [41:16] That was a good time. [41:17] Yeah, I agree. [41:18] And there are a bunch of little things I think, [41:21] Kyle, like you're saying about aim in particular [41:23] that it just got right. [41:24] Like why in God's name do we not have away messages [41:27] in every messaging app that exists, right? [41:29] Even Apple has sort of added the thing [41:31] you can see at the bottom where it's like so-and-so [41:33] has notifications silenced. [41:34] And it's like that's a step towards the right thing, [41:37] but like. [41:38] Customize it. [41:39] Yeah, we should have that kind of control. [41:42] I should be able to tell you [41:43] why I don't want your messages right now. [41:46] I should be able to put hands down [41:47] by dashboard confessional in that message. [41:50] And Instagram added that to stories. [41:52] There's like tiny little bits of text [41:54] that you can see in the DM window or whatever. [41:57] So we're just chasing the dream. [41:59] All right, Kyle, thank you for joining us. [42:01] Yeah, this is so fun. [42:02] Memory land. [42:04] We're gonna take a break and then we're gonna come back. [42:05] We're gonna do the version history questions. [42:07] We'll be right back. [42:12] All right, we're back. [42:13] V, it's just you and me now. [42:14] We're gonna do the version history questions. [42:15] These are the eight questions we ask [42:16] about every product we cover. [42:18] The first one is where does aim fit on the time matrix? [42:22] The time matrix is idea versus time. [42:24] Right idea, right time, wrong idea, wrong time, [42:26] or somewhere in between. [42:28] We got four quadrants. [42:29] Where does it belong? [42:30] So I think aim is just very clearly [42:32] through right idea at the right time for me. [42:35] I'm honestly with you. [42:36] I think it is like the top right corner. [42:37] I think if you're AOL, [42:41] it is the wrongest possible idea at the right time. [42:46] You know what I mean? [42:46] Yeah, no, for sure. [42:48] You can make a non-crazy argument [42:49] that aim's success is a big part of what killed AOL. [42:54] No, it definitely is. [42:55] Because instead of luring people into the walled garden, [42:58] it actually pulled them out of it. [43:00] No, I was actually thinking about that earlier [43:03] in the episode just because it's like [43:05] at the time where things shifted [43:07] because I could have aim and my buddy was still, [43:10] I didn't need to be in AOL anymore [43:12] because AOL was starting to be lame. [43:14] But I think for our purposes, [43:16] I don't care about AOL's corporate upside, [43:19] it was the right idea at the right time. [43:20] Given everything we knew before and after, [43:23] even if you move it like a few years up [43:25] or a few years back, it doesn't hit the same way. [43:26] It was the right thing at the right time. [43:28] It was the exact moment. [43:30] It's like the universe was like, [43:32] now is the era of aim. [43:34] Okay, question number two. [43:35] Was aim peak anything? [43:37] Yes, it was peak romance. [43:39] It was peak puberty for a certain age. [43:41] It was certainly peak puberty [43:42] for a whole generation of people. [43:45] Actually, I got my first ever significant other [43:48] through aim. [43:49] That was my first romance whatever. [43:52] Tell us everything. [43:53] This is peak V. [43:54] It was my peak first Valentine's [43:57] because my crush at the time, [43:59] I am me and was like, [44:01] hey, what's your home room? [44:03] And I was like, oh, my home room's 7S. [44:05] No, seriously, what's the room? [44:07] And I was like, oh, it's this room. [44:08] He's like, what's your favorite flower? [44:09] And I was like, oh, this thing. [44:12] I was like, cool. [44:13] I don't know what's happening. [44:15] I was very dumb. [44:16] I was gonna say that's not like a stealthy exchange. [44:18] No, it was not stealthy, but I was very dumb [44:22] because it was peak emotional damage is what it was [44:25] because my middle school crush one time was like, [44:28] so does this thing. [44:29] And I think you're cute door slamming noise. [44:31] And I was like, what? [44:33] Was he telling the truth? [44:35] What's happening? [44:35] And then denied it the next thing [44:37] and there's no chat history. [44:38] So I was like, did that motherfucker gaslight paint? [44:43] That's rough. [44:44] Was it their friend that did that and then signed it? [44:46] That's tough. [44:47] It was peak emotional damage. [44:49] It was peak romance. [44:50] It was peak friend drama. [44:53] It was peak puberty. [44:54] It was peak puberty. [44:55] It was peak puberty. [44:55] It was peak away message for sure. [44:57] Peak away message. [44:58] Nobody has ever done away messages as well [45:00] before or since. [45:00] Yeah, no peak buddy list, peak status. [45:03] Just peak everything. [45:04] Peak usage of song lyrics to communicate emotions. [45:07] Peak usage of song lyrics. [45:09] That's the most I've ever. [45:10] Peak dashboard confessional for sure. [45:12] Peak, Incubus. [45:14] Something corporate. [45:15] Good Charlotte. [45:17] Peak. [45:17] Peak. [45:18] This was like right at the moment [45:19] where like deeply angsty punk rock music was everywhere [45:24] and those two things needed each other. [45:26] It's a perfect symbiosis. [45:28] I have never thought about song lyrics [45:30] quite as hard ever since [45:32] because I don't have to put it in the away message. [45:35] All right, question number three. [45:36] This is actually I think a fun one [45:38] for this particular episode. [45:40] If you could time travel back and take over AM yourself, [45:43] could you make it more successful? [45:46] I don't think I could. [45:47] No, okay, I have a couple of ideas [45:49] about how I think I could have made AM more successful. [45:51] Again, if I'm AOL, the clear answer is like embrace AM. [45:56] Make it the gateway drug into AOL [45:58] and suddenly you have something. [45:59] But I think there's a world in which [46:03] AM could have figured out mobile way faster. [46:06] Because again, part of me is like, [46:09] it's an unfair thing to expect them to do [46:10] but also like turn of the century, [46:12] it was like pretty clear phones were going to be a thing. [46:16] Yeah. [46:17] Right, and like Blackberry starts poking at BBM, [46:20] like Google Talk and all this stuff [46:22] doesn't come for a few more years [46:24] but like the signs were there enough [46:27] that if they had wanted to push for [46:29] we wanna make this a thing you can do everywhere. [46:33] They could have done it. [46:33] You could have. [46:34] The other option I would give you [46:35] and this is a story we haven't really gotten into [46:38] is AM was built on this protocol called Oscar [46:41] which was, it's an acronym, [46:43] but it doesn't really matter what it was [46:45] but the idea was it was an actual [46:49] sort of documented protocol with an SDK. [46:51] And so one of the things that AM had going for it [46:53] was that you could use lots of other apps [46:55] to talk to your AM friends, right? [46:56] This is like Trillian was big, Pigeon was big. [47:00] There were a lot of ways to like. [47:02] I haven't thought of Pigeon in forever, oh my god, yeah. [47:04] And one of the things that those apps let you do [47:07] was chat to people across messaging apps, right? [47:10] So you could use, Trillian was the one that I used [47:13] to have like your MSN friends and your AM friends [47:17] and other services all in one place [47:19] and that became very powerful. [47:20] The AM team gets in this big protracted fight [47:24] with these other things. [47:25] They were okay with the third party apps [47:27] that let you talk to your AM friends [47:29] but like one thing, one way that Microsoft bootstrapped [47:32] MSN Messenger was by just reverse engineering AM [47:36] so that you could talk to your AM friends through MSN. [47:39] And AM did not like this because they wanted you to use AM. [47:41] I think there's a world in which AM [47:44] could have essentially positioned itself [47:47] as like a semi-open messaging protocol [47:50] which wouldn't have been crazy, right? [47:51] Because this is a team of renegades inside of a company. [47:54] Like they're clearly not spending their time [47:56] worrying about the giant business here. [47:58] But there is like, if you think of AM as like [48:01] not an app they were trying to build [48:03] but like as an infrastructure. [48:06] Yeah, that could have worked. [48:07] It could have been something. [48:08] That could have been something for sure. [48:10] Like, and if you take that and somehow combine it [48:12] with the mobile, we could still be using AM today. [48:16] And there's a way to make that solve [48:19] a lot of the messaging problems we eventually got [48:22] because what we got, right, is there was, [48:23] it was Oscar and then there was this other protocol [48:25] called XMPP and everybody just stopped using those, right? [48:28] Because they weren't powerful enough. [48:29] They didn't have enough features [48:30] and so like Facebook goes off [48:31] and builds its own messaging universe. [48:33] Google goes off and builds its own messaging universe. [48:35] WhatsApp builds its own universe. [48:36] Slack builds its own universe. [48:38] We don't have. [48:39] Now we have too many apps. [48:40] We have way too many apps and we don't have any kind [48:42] of like common infrastructure for messaging. [48:45] And the fact that there isn't just an IM protocol [48:47] on the internet is dumb and bad. [48:50] Yeah, it's bad. [48:52] Okay. [48:53] And if I'm running the aim team it's like [48:54] we're going down, we're all getting fired. [48:56] We are going to, we are going to, [48:58] we are going to like open source this fool. [49:00] I'm with you now. [49:01] That I think would have made it way more successful [49:04] and would have solved the fact [49:05] that I have like 14 chat apps on my phone. [49:08] Yeah, it's a real like layoffs are coming tomorrow. [49:09] Let's give this to everybody and be heroes. [49:11] You know what I mean? [49:12] Like that's the speech I'm giving to the team on the way out. [49:14] We could be heroes. [49:16] Would have been great. [49:17] Get that time machine David. [49:18] Fix my chat situation. [49:21] We could all still be hearing the door noise [49:23] every time our friends come offline. [49:26] All right, question number four. [49:27] Will the youth ever make it cool again? [49:29] No, it's dead. [49:31] It's just dead. [49:32] I think that's right. [49:32] It's just dead, dead. [49:33] It's on the millennials to make it cool again [49:36] and bring it back and revive it. [49:38] Not the youth, the youth don't care. [49:40] They're just tick talking. [49:42] Yeah, I think in a weird way, [49:45] the idea of having like a single place [49:47] I talk to my friends is like so far gone [49:51] that now it's like if you're, [49:53] I think Snapchat is probably the closest thing now [49:56] in terms of like if you're 14, [49:59] where do you talk to your friends? [50:00] I think the answer is like overwhelmingly Snapchat. [50:02] Or it depends on what country you're in even. [50:05] Because here I think it's Snapchat [50:07] but like in Korea everyone's on Kakao Talk [50:10] and it's just like this one super app [50:12] where everything lives [50:13] and it's just your whole life in one app. [50:15] Right, and that's like WeChat in China, [50:16] like there are a bunch of examples of that. [50:18] So I think it's so fragmented [50:20] that the youth just don't know what it was like [50:23] to be in one place at the same time. [50:26] The internet's just too big for it now. [50:27] It's too big. [50:28] It's way too big and now that's why [50:30] we have cursed things like TikTok. [50:33] I will say if we can find a way [50:35] to make it cool to have CD-ROMs [50:36] that let you get on the internet, [50:38] I don't know how we'd do that, [50:39] but it feels great. [50:40] I miss having 400 AOLs. [50:44] Yeah, what if the internet just randomly showed up [50:46] in your mailbox every once in a while? [50:48] Like let's get back to that. [50:49] You know what I mean? [50:50] And then when you run out of hours, [50:51] oh no, no more internet. [50:52] I think we need that. [50:53] I think we do. [50:54] This is what I'm saying. [50:55] All right, question number five. [50:56] This one I have a very clear answer to. [50:59] What feature of AIM should every current messaging app have? [51:02] The door closing noise. [51:03] I think we need to traumatize a whole new generation [51:09] of them talking to their crush, [51:10] them saying something, [51:11] and then were you messaging them, [51:13] and then the door noise. [51:14] So that you can just like see that [51:17] and then go turn around in your head [51:20] and just sadness. [51:21] I think every teenager needs to go through that. [51:24] It'll build character. [51:25] I agree with that. [51:26] You message your friend and they immediately go offline. [51:27] Everyone should know how horrible that feels. [51:30] Because now the thing is like you send a text message [51:33] and you get the red message [51:34] and you don't get a reply back. [51:35] That's the equivalent. [51:37] It's not nearly as dramatic [51:39] as the door closing in your face. [51:40] No, okay, but to that point actually, [51:42] there are two that I would do. [51:44] One is the away message. [51:45] Like I sincerely believe everything needs an away message [51:47] that is just, it just pops up and is like, I'm not here. [51:50] But the other thing, [51:51] and this is kind of a spin on what you were just saying [51:54] is I think you need to be able to go offline [51:57] in such a way that makes messages undeliverable. [52:00] Like I should make it so, [52:02] not that I get a bunch of texts from you when I come back, [52:05] but that you can't message me because I'm not here. [52:10] Right, there is this thing, like even now, [52:11] like if you sign off of Slack, I can still Slack you. [52:14] Yes. [52:15] You won't see it, you won't get notifications, [52:16] but the messages will be there waiting for you [52:18] when you come back. [52:19] David, as we know, as the wearables reviewer, [52:21] even if I sign off here, it's coming here. [52:23] I mean, true. [52:24] It's coming somewhere. [52:25] But like we've lost this idea to just be like, [52:27] you actually can't communicate with me [52:29] because I'm not here. [52:30] Yeah. [52:32] When I sign off my phone, [52:33] I'm gonna get a bunch of your text messages when, [52:34] but if I was offline on aim, you couldn't message me. [52:37] No, no, that needs to come back. [52:39] Do you know how great that is? [52:39] That needs to come back. [52:40] We both have to agree that we are going to talk [52:42] in order for us to talk. [52:43] And if I'm not here, [52:45] you can't just shout things through my window. [52:47] Like I'm not here. [52:49] And I think we need more tools like that. [52:51] I think so too. [52:52] Not just to stack stuff up for when we get back, [52:54] but to say, if you wanna talk to me, [52:56] talk to me when I get back. [52:57] I'm not here. [52:57] I think that would be better [52:58] for everyone's mental health. [53:00] So yes. [53:00] I do too. Bring that back. [53:02] Not just status messages, [53:03] but let me sign off. [53:05] Yeah, I'm not here right now. [53:07] Buh-bye. [53:07] Yeah. [53:08] Silencing notifications does not solve that problem. [53:10] It doesn't work. [53:11] Yeah. [53:12] All right, now we have three more questions. [53:14] These are the version history [53:15] hall of fame criteria questions. [53:17] And in order to get in, [53:18] any product has to pass all three of these questions. [53:21] Question number one, [53:21] did this product do something truly new? [53:24] Yes. [53:25] Because before we had email. [53:27] An email was slow. [53:28] An email was revolutionary. [53:29] There are a bunch of ICQ fans [53:31] who just started screaming at you. [53:32] I will just say. [53:33] That's fine. [53:34] They screamed at me 20, 30 years ago. [53:35] They could scream at me now. [53:38] That was not an ICQ girl, [53:39] but everybody I knew was on AIM. [53:41] So it did do something, truly do in the sense. [53:45] Was ICQ playing door slamming noises? [53:48] Sure wasn't. [53:49] No. [53:49] Was it ruining my mental health as a teenager? [53:52] No. [53:53] Was it fostering romance? [53:54] No. [53:56] Did ICQ inspire Mark Zuckerberg [53:59] to think about song lyrics [54:02] that he was gonna put into things? [54:03] No. [54:04] Did ICQ lead to the cursedness [54:08] that was social media right now? [54:09] No. [54:10] So I think AIM did new things. [54:13] So I was originally gonna argue that it didn't [54:15] because there were messaging apps before. [54:18] But I think the thing I've realized [54:20] in this conversation is that there's something [54:22] to the whole thought of AIM that made it different. [54:27] Because it wasn't just a chat app. [54:31] The profiles were really important. [54:32] The away messages were really important. [54:34] The buddy list system was really important. [54:37] And without that particular combination of things, [54:42] you do just get every other messaging app [54:45] kind of messaging app. [54:46] You just get forums and chats. [54:48] Right, there were lots of ways [54:49] to type words to another person. [54:51] But AIM was a social network in a very real way. [54:55] It's the precursor to how we do social networks now. [55:00] Friend lists, arguably friend lists came from buddy lists. [55:05] We just changed it to the word friend. [55:07] And the concept of friending someone online, [55:10] that's, you used to just have to go [55:12] to a chat forum or a channel or whatnot. [55:15] And now you have a personalized friend list that's yours. [55:19] And the cultivation of that is just a thing [55:22] that you think about and creates this cultural, [55:24] social construct. [55:26] So I think that, yeah, that's new, I think, [55:29] for the internet at that point in time. [55:32] I think you're right. [55:33] Yeah, I'm good with it. [55:35] Question number two, was it either remarkably good [55:37] or remarkably bad? [55:38] It was remarkably good. [55:39] Was it? [55:40] No, but it was. [55:42] Was it a good product or was it just exactly [55:44] the thing that we needed? [55:45] Do you know what I mean? [55:46] It was exactly the thing that we needed. [55:48] And I argue that it makes it good [55:50] because if it was remarkably bad, [55:52] we would be talking about it in a different way. [55:54] Not with this, like, I'm back into this period of my life [55:59] and I'm thinking of it through this nostalgia filter. [56:02] I feel like you only feel that way [56:04] about things that make you, I don't know, [56:08] just long for a period of time. [56:11] I don't long for bad things in my life. [56:13] I don't go back. [56:15] Yeah, I remember the time where everything went to hell [56:18] and I was losing weight because this dipshit [56:21] stomped all over my heart. [56:22] I don't think you guys long for those times, [56:24] but you go and I look back [56:26] and I have such an incredible love and fondness for AIM. [56:29] So much so that I wrote an essay called I Miss AIM. [56:32] True. [56:33] So, yeah, I think it was good. [56:35] Remarkably good, yeah. [56:37] I'm torn. [56:38] Lobstomp! [56:39] These are fundamental things in my life! [56:41] Lobstomp! [56:42] I mean, that's fair. [56:43] That is hard to argue with. [56:44] Yeah, I think there's a much more complex version of this [56:48] about AOL as a whole. [56:50] I think you could really struggle to make a case [56:53] that AOL was ever remarkably good as a whole. [56:57] But this thing was free. [57:00] It was pretty reliable. [57:01] It was pretty fast. [57:02] It did the damn job. [57:04] To your point, you could warn people [57:06] and just throttle their internet. [57:08] Oh yeah, speaking of features I'd like to add, [57:09] I would like to be able to shut off [57:11] other people's internet connections. [57:13] Yes, please. [57:13] For bad behavior, like, pfft. [57:16] You need to touch grass. [57:17] We can just change it from the warn [57:19] to the touch grass button. [57:20] And so, yeah. [57:22] There you go. [57:23] All right, well, this is bad news [57:24] because this thing is about to get into the Hall of Fame [57:26] because this is the easiest one. [57:27] Criteria number three, did it have a lasting impact? [57:31] Yes, yes it did. [57:32] It did, I think this is the clearest one to me. [57:35] I mean, obviously we've been waxing poetic [57:37] about puberty and all of these times in our lives [57:40] that it lives rent free in your head. [57:42] So, of course it had a lasting impact. [57:45] It has a whole chapter in the history of instant messaging. [57:49] Yeah, I mean, I think truly Jack Dorsey [57:51] and Mark Zuckerberg answer that question, right? [57:54] None of the rest of this happens the way that it did [57:57] if it were not for the whole generation growing up on aim. [58:00] The yellow running man. [58:01] It just was. [58:02] All right, you talked me into it. [58:04] Thank you. [58:05] The Hall of Fame, I worry we're gonna end up [58:06] just putting all the things we liked [58:07] when we were 13 into the Hall of Fame. [58:09] So we're gonna have to try not to do that. [58:12] But I liked this so much when I was 13. [58:14] I loved, this was my whole life when I was that age, you know? [58:19] So many of my fundamental core personality memories [58:23] come from aim. [58:24] It's just forever, I will forever miss it. [58:28] All right. [58:29] I will forever miss it. [58:30] Well, aim, welcome to the Virgin History Hall of Fame. [58:33] Thank you again to V and Kyle for being here [58:34] and thank you as always for watching and listening. [58:36] If you wanna support this [58:37] and all of the stuff that we're doing, [58:39] the best thing you can do is subscribe to The Verge, [58:41] TheVerge.com, it's a good website. [58:43] Subscribe, you can get all of our podcasts ad free [58:46] and lots of other good stuff. [58:47] Subscribe to The Verge, we're doing our best. [58:49] We will be back with more Virgin History very soon. [58:52] We'll see you next time. [58:53] Bye-bye.