Multiple sources are reporting that AOL’s Instant Messenger service finally died today, after a long battle with complete technological irrelevance. Once the premiere platform for online conversations, away-message-based subtweets, and obsessively checking to see if your crush was online but refusing to answer your messages, AIM is survived by a million John Lennon quotes artfully deployed on people’s profiles.
AOL announced that it would be discontinuing the service earlier this year, shocking a great many people with the news that AIM was still somehow in operation in 2017. The service hasn’t had a development team working on it for more than six years, and was finally, mercifully put down earlier today. Fare thee well, AIM; you made it easy to annoy other people on the internet, long before Twitter was just a bad idea percolating in Jack Dorsey’s head. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.