AOL Instant Messenger, chopped off at the knees by a horde of similar services, was shut down on Friday but not before some fond farewells on social media.
Oath, the new service formed when Verizon combined AOL with recently purchased Yahoo, announced two months ago that it would be ending AIM in a world now flooded with instant messaging services, USA Today reported.
"AIM tapped into new digital technologies and ignited a cultural shift, but the way in which we communicate with each other has profoundly changed," Michael Albers, vice president of communications product at Oath, said about the service that had been around since 1997, per USA Today.
AIM struggled to make a transition to mobile, where most users rely on instant messaging services.
The New York Times reported that while some chat services predated AOL Instant Messenger, AIM came along at a time when the internet (then spelled with a capital "i") was rapidly spreading into more homes through dial-up modems and cable connections.
"There are a lot of people who had milestone moments in their lives that happened on AIM," said Caroline Moss, a writer and editor in New York who paid tribute to AIM with the parody Twitter account @YourAwayMessage, per the Times. "Someone asked them out, or they got broken up with, or they got in a fight with a friend."
Some waved a fond farewell to AOL with their own screen names.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.