The idea of messaging another person over a technological device didn't start with cell phones, or Facebook Messenger, but way before either of those technologies ever existed.

In May of 1997, an Internet service provider changed the way people communicate online that shaped into what we use today without really knowing where our communication came from.

There was once an ISP named America Online (which still exists today) which made their service accessible to millions of PC users across the globe. AOL (the acronym for America Online) was another competitor for the mid to late 1990’s Internet market, along with Netscape, GeoCities and CompuServe just to name a few companies that were all part of the market at the time.

AOL wanted to make a service that made online communication more easy to use, without people using email, BBS’s, Guestbooks and UseNet groups to communicate to one another. This is when AIM came into the picture, or America (Online) Instant Messenger. Within a few years since its launch 20 years ago, just about everyone with a computer was using AIM to communicate to family, friends, online communities, and random strangers who said they were cute teenage girls that were anything but.

Before people had the easy access of pulling up someone’s Facebook profile to see what they looked like, it was the wild west in terms of believing who was being truthful on chatrooms. The instant start of a conversation you had to get an idea of who you were talking too, which was set up in a simple phrase: A/S/L. A/S/L stood for Age, Sex and Location that the person being asked the question had to respond to it, otherwise they were disconnected from the person asking them and moved onto another individual who would slightly be more honest than them. This was common hierarchal law of the land for using AIM, and if someone couldn’t be honest off the get go, then what’s the point of continuing the conversation from there.

From the early stages of AIM up until March the 28^th of this year, AIM was still a valuable resource for online communication, even when its popularity began to decline in the past decade due to social media beginning to form to what they are known for today. It got to the point where AOL saw that keeping this chat service still active was costing more than it was helping. It became officially outdated, especially when a couple of years back AOL fired all their tech support which kept the chat program running. For the past few years it has been on electronic life support, and now the program has officially flatlined its way into the Internet history books.

For an outdated and now considered prehistoric program, AIM has been part of my Internet life going back to when my parents got our first family Gateway PC in the summer of 1999. If it wasn’t for a program like AIM, I would have never met my good friend and first adolescent love, which we keep in contact to this day, 18 years later. I also wouldn’t have met my current chat group that I’ve seen grow up in the past decade coming from an animation forum we were once part of.

Using AIM, good online friendships were born that make up part of my life.

Although my group had since left AIM a year ago when the program ditched the online group function, we still use other programs out there to maintain contact with each other daily.

Online friendships are no different than non-online ones, because all it takes is two people communicating with each other with what tools they have in front of them to use. AIM for me was a program that was the only tool I had to maintain the friendships I keep to this day, and to know that it's going in the history books puts into perspective not only how old I am, but also what good came from using AIM to start and maintain these relationships all these years later.

And this all started from just asking “A/S/L” …