The Rise and Fall of Social Media Empires: AOL Instant Messenger Podcast Transcript

What happened to AOL Instant Messenger?  Whether it was a cornerstone of your coming-of-age experience or something you've never heard of before now, join us as we look at how it all started, its cultural significance, and why it all came to an end.

Taryn Ward.  Hi.  I'm Taryn Ward, and this is Breaking the Feed, Social Media: Beyond the Headlines.

TW.  We're taking a closer look at the core issues around social media, including the rise and fall of social media empires, to better understand the role social media plays in our everyday lives in society.

TW.  Today, we're looking specifically at AOL Instant Messenger.  AOL is really its own story, no less interesting or important.  But the story of AIM stands out because it was such an important early model of what social media could be.  

TW.  We'll start, as always, with the question, what can we take with us from AIM?  And what can we learn from its meteoric rise and eventual downfall?  Let's start with setting some bookends in terms of timeframes.  AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM for short, was first released to the public in 1997, and closed at the end of 2017.  When it was released in 1997, it was only available from a desktop computer.  And really, that's how its use remained throughout.

TW.  It's worth briefly describing how a marked with an overview of its features.  There were no emojis back then.  But you could choose your own username, we call them screen names, customise your profile, and design or add designs to your bio, you could put up away messages saying that you were away from your computer or unavailable, or a favourite song or a favourite quote.  It largely functioned based on a buddy list.  So, it was a screen that would sort of pop up on your computer with a list of people you are connected to, your friends, and whether they were online or offline.  You could also see their away messages if they were online but not at their computer or online and doing something else.  Just backing up to how this all started.

TW.  Barry Appleman Eric Bosco and Jerry Harris are usually listed as the primary engineers, Appleman had this idea back in 1994, to create a buddy list.  And the idea here was that you could see when other AOL users were online, this is important.  So back then, many accounts paid to be online by the hour.  So this would allow you to see whether your friends were online and to connect with them quickly.  He built this without telling anyone, and in an interview, well, after the fact, he explained it.  That was because there was really no oversight in terms of product management.  So, he just decided to do it. 

TW.  By the time Bosco and Harris joined in 1996, AOL had switched.  So, they weren't really using the hourly rate structure anymore, it was a flat fee.  So, to be part of AOL, America Online, you paid a flat fee to use their services.  AIM right from the beginning was free, it was a free download, which explains why according to Appelman, AOL wanted to kill it at various points.  And he felt for sure that they wanted to fire him.  This tension was there really from the beginning and continued, I would argue until the very end, it's worth talking a little bit about the significance of AIM for those who didn't use it.  And even for those who did, I think it's easy to overlook or to forget how important it really was.  So, because of the clever programming, it was very difficult for IT departments and administrators to block it.  So, people could use it on their work computers most of the time.  And AIM became not just how teenagers communicated and how people communicate informally but also how much of Wall Street communicated for a pretty significant period of time, which was really incredible if you think about it.  So, there's this free service that people are just using, sort of in all walks of life to communicate about about all this.  It's worth saying again, that there were no cell phones, so it wasn't competing with texting and texting wasn't an option.  So, it was either really pick up the phone and call someone, send an email, or you have that instant ability to send a message. 

TW.  This was the first time we saw widespread online chat, instant message, or IM lingo take off so GTG for "got to go" and TTY for "talk to you later".  And some other little gems really started.  Not only did they come up for the first time in AIM, they really started to spread.  I'll read a quote just briefly from a BU article, Boston University article about the significance of this and how it really suited the times.  Before this only telephones and email existed.  People could easily share issues and events happening with friends get assistance with schoolwork quickly, or even flourish friendships in the comfort of your own home.  After 9/11, When people were hiding inside and children weren't allowed to go out, especially in the New York City metropolitan area, children could still communicate and have a connection to the outside world.  They were able to talk to their friends and discuss what happened and why it was important.  The 9/11 example is important here, because it was also a significant part of part of the times.  And although that was a one-off experience, many people during this time, many teenagers who used AIM would experience something in real life, and then go and share it on AIM with someone, or in some cases, they would experience something really important on AIM, and then discuss it over the phone.  So, there was still this back and forth.  But I would say that at this point, it was really sort of a secondary thing, or it was a way of communicating and expressing and processing something that happened in real life, more than it was a place for experiences to happen without outside context. 

TW.  Importantly, AOL was a paid service.  So not everyone could access it, you know, so initially, only America Online, AOL, customers could chat with other AOL customers.  So, if you were a teenager, and your parents didn't subscribe, but your friend's parents did, they could all talk to each other.  And you were sort of stuck on the outside, not part of those conversations.  And it wasn't really a situation where you could, you know, email them and then they would email you back, it was sort of you were in or you're out.  And AIM, change that so anyone could download it on any computer, I think I downloaded it on all of our devices.  Not that we had so many.  But I mean, my parents weren't computers, our computer at home, because it was a it was a quick thing.  And I can use their, their computers wherever we were to access this.  And it was so critical and so essential that I'd be able to do that.  

TW.  Remember, this was really the only game in town to there are no group tags, or WhatsApp groups or Snaps, it was either you pick up a phone that's attached to the wall, hope to reach every other individual person at their home.  Also probably connected to the wall, maybe even kicking someone with the internet in the process, or send an email, or you use AIM and AIM was really sort of it.  For me.  It was it was I've said elsewhere, this is a huge, huge part of my life.  And my, my experience, I would say from the age of 13 until my early 20s.  It was and AOL before that, it was really important.  It was the primary way I would communicate with friends, other than in person or over the phone.  And especially because I moved twice in that period, there was a way for me to talk to people who otherwise would be a long-distance phone call.  So, it was it was really important in that sense top.

TW.  When I think about my experiences on AIM.  And what young people experience in social media.  Now, there's there are a lot of differences.  I'm not here to argue or even to suggest that it was without dangers or problems.  It absolutely was in these were dangers and problems our parents and guardians were largely oblivious to and regulators certainly were because it was a whole new world it was developing sort of in real time as where we but I would say three key things made it made it different in in positive ways.  

TW.  So, so first, it was only available on desktop computers.  So, we couldn't carry it around with us on our phones, even if our parents had it on a laptop, we still had to be connected to the Internet somewhere.  And sitting and typing in a keyboard.  If we wanted to connect this way, we had to really commit.  So, we had to sit down.  And I think it reduced the temptation and the opportunity to be on it constantly.  And this is especially true in families where we all shared one computer or shared two computers.  And there was really no opportunity for or little opportunity for privacy.  Some people would have their computer in sort of a side room.  But for most people this computer was sort of in their main living room or their kitchen.  And you know, people would be walking by and seeing what was happening.  So, it wasn't the sort of thing that you were just doing yourself on your device with no one else participating or able to participate in the second, most of the interactions or with people we knew in real life.  So even where there were people we didn't know, there was no worry about bots.  So, it's not like mis- and disinformation was being spread to these networks.  We might get bad information from our friends and certainly many of us did.  But there was no plot behind it.  It wasn't designed to make us you know, see conspiracy theories where there were none or to confuse us about basic facts or information.  So even though there is no identity verification, like with some of the communities on Discord now, you usually only connected with people you knew and when you didn't, it became fairly obvious relatively quickly whether it was going to be a problematic interaction.  

TW.  Again, there were exceptions to this there were stories of terrible things happening.  And it was not without risks or dangers.  But I think if we think about how things work now and the dangers young people are faced with, and the very sophisticated campaigns that go on, it's, it's not even in the same ballgame.  Finally, AIM never figured out ads.  Ultimately, this may be what killed it.  But it meant for us at the time that their incentives were never misaligned.  So, in other words, they were never motivated to keep us angry and online.  Because their bottom line didn't depend on how much content we created, or how many lines we scrolled, it was really designed to be a pleasant, enjoyable, smooth experience.  

TW.  Again, I just want to say before I get into a lot of trouble, it was no utopia.  And for teenagers, there was very little oversight, and no concept that what we put out there could follow us around forever.  Partially, because in most cases, it didn't, it was sort of out there and then gone.  There were exceptions to this, but I don't remember cases of schools being involved or parents being overly involved or, or really, that there was a need for that.  Again, not because it was without problems.  If I think about bad experiences that I had on AIM, there aren't there aren't very many.  But there's one girl in particular, I can't even remember her name now.  But she was she was really mean, and it came out in instant messenger.  She didn't even go to my school, she went to another school, but we had sort of friends who overlapped, and she liked a boy I was dating, and she started to say or write all these horrible things to me directly, I could block her, which was a great feature and an important feature, but also to others.  So, she would find who my friends were and message them things copy and paste.  So, it was a function back then.  And even in her away messages she would put up, you know, sort of mean comments that were either thinly veiled or not veiled at all. Carissa Her name was Carissa. Wow, I haven't thought about her a long time.  Anyway, she said some awful, awful things.  One thing in particular about a haircut that in fairness to her was a little bit mullet like, but you know, I was a teenager Give me, Give me a break.  It didn't hurt it was it felt different than somebody saying it to my face because it was in writing.  And not in writing in private, it was in writing out there for everyone to see, particularly in the away message.  And it was embarrassing.  But it didn't feel world ending in the way I think it probably would now.  Because even though AIM was a relatively huge part of my life, my identity was never tied up with an online persona or my online life in the same way.  And there was so much overlap with my real life that it felt like it had a, it had a resting place it had it has some boundaries, or it was boundried.  

TW.  And just to be clear, this is not me patting myself on the back, I had some very unhealthy online habits, including staying up too late.  And a lot of this was sheer dumb luck.  But a lot of people, I think felt this way and had this experience, because that's just how it was designed.  And sometimes I think we tend to look at social media now and think it had to be this way.  This is just how social media works.  But, but actually it didn't.  And it doesn't, because it didn't, there is a different way to do this.  And there was a different way.  So, so again, teenagers are doing things they shouldn't they always will they always have one of those special AIM phrases, P/O/S meant parent over shoulder, this was developed on a sort of famously, it was called really to let your friends know not to say anything too colourful.  Now, again, how different this is to having friends over and sort of closing the door.  I don't know, but it is I would say, you know if that's one step removed from having it happened in person, I think it's certainly not the same as some of the things that happen on, on Snapchat now.  

TW.  Before moving on.  Just another note on away messages.  These were really important opportunities in self-expression.  We'll talk a little bit more about this when we look at some of the other earlier socials like MySpace.  But these were in some cases, real works of art.  So sometimes that I the colours or the font, you could put up favourite quotes, or song lyrics.  And sometimes these quotes or song lyrics were meant to show a part of your personality or who you were, but a lot of times they were meant to express something that you were feeling at that time.  And I think for teenagers, it was a really important if strange outlet.  Alex Haimkan wrote in a Wired article about this.  And you know, he talked a bit about the platform's native conventions, but specifically talked about away messages inside a particularly angsty song lyric, ideally a line or two from a dash poured confessional track was a cry for help and comfort.  I was never bold enough to my recollection to use a dashboard line that was sort of reserved for would have been a lot.  But that common definitely struck a chord.  And I, you know, I can definitely remember hearing a song and thinking, oh, that's a great line, I'm gonna use that.  And, in fact, I had a long list of away messages with different lines that I liked that I could put up, you know, that were tied to different feelings, or different sensations, or just different things that I wanted to share with the world.  And this was well before the time when most people had their own websites, or pages, various places.  So, it was a place where we could really express ourselves in a different way.  And because it wasn't tied to images, you know, this was long before the days of colour-coded bookshelves, thankfully, it was really, the sky was the limit.  I mean, you could write something, you could use different colours to express something.  And it wasn't it wasn't about perfection.  It wasn't about representing something that was meant to be true.  But wasn't it was really just about sharing a feeling.  And I think I think some of that is is lost now, which is just too bad.  

TW.  But they say all good things must come to an end.  And in this case, AIM was no exception.  Different reasons have been floated for why this happened.  One that comes up a lot was AIMs resistance to collaborate with outside developers or to make AIM open source.  And that all this resulted in the failure of innovation.  I'm sure there's things to help, there were various rounds of layoffs, that left AIM with a bare bones crew to keep servers running.  There's a chicken and egg question here about whether there is a huge loss of users.  And then the layoffs happened or whether the layoffs caused the loss of users and whether it just became cyclical, but surely, it wouldn't have helped.  Others have suggested that because things like text messaging and G-chat and Facebook really started to become options.  AIM was never really competitive or designed to be competitive with something like this.  You could argue also, that's because AIM never really figured out the shift to mobile, it was designed to be used on the desktop from the beginning.  And making that shift wasn't something that that every platform did well.  And you can imagine that at the time, it would have been a huge investment and risk.  And given the relationship and the tension between AOL and AIM.  Remember, AIM was still free, it would have been a big ask and a big commitment, probably for AOL to approve that kind of spending.  

TW.  Fundamentally, AOL was a subscription business.  And AIM was a free service that costs them money.  There were some attempts to monetize with ads or advertisements on AIM, but it never really caught on.  And again because AOL was anti open source.  And that would have been a low-cost way to add features there was there was this tension, and there was this this sort of, you know, how do we innovate?  And how do we add things if these are boundaries, and you won't spend any money on it.  So, I think a lot of people feel like it was really inevitable, because of all these factors sort of sort of stacked against it.  

TW.  And even I have to admit that by the time, AIM shut down in 2017, it probably was time, their user base was virtually nonexistent.  And it just didn't make sense to keep going.  There was an opportunity just before it shut down, to download your old logs.  And part of me really wishes I had, but part of me is relieved that that part of my life, which felt so private, and protected and unique to me at the time, can stay that way.  And I find myself wishing the current and future generations could have the same comfort, or at least that same option.  Not that we want to erase our paths or anything like that.  But I think now, there's a sense that there's no room to make mistakes.  And because everything is in writing, and everything has the potential to follow us around forever.  It really is just a lot of pressure. 

TW.  Back to our original question, what can we learn from AIM in terms of the experience offered and its downfall, I think we can learn about the importance of having limitations.  I think AIM brought with it and had just as a part of its timing, some boundaries in terms of when we could use it and how often we were connected.  And so, it didn't interfere with our experience of, of life around us.  You know, we weren't walking down the stairs, typing on our phones on AIM.  We were just walking down the stairs and feeling the carpet, probably carpet on our feet.  And you know, maybe looking out the window even.  

TW.  And so I think you know, thinking about our time, and when we use these social networks thoughtlessly and whether that is a good thing for us or not in how it affects our lives, and especially for young people who are still developing habits, whether there are things we can do to sort of say, okay, you know, there's a time and a place for this, but don't let it become your whole life.  The second thing, the second point, I mentioned in terms of how this experience is different, was about interacting with people we already knew.  

TW.  So, we really believe at Bright that it's important to verify the identity of every single person on the network.  We're very pro-privacy, we think privacy is really important.  At the same time, keeping young people safe is too and there are so many bots now on various social networks.  And so many people don't even realise how it impacts their experience of which news articles get promoted and how things are circulated.  You know, AIM didn't do that.  But it didn't need to, and so I think thinking about how that shift from a network that didn't need that, because it was people we already knew to networks now where they're completely open, how we navigate that shift, and what our what our options really are.  

TW.  Finally, I think ads and revenue models, I think, when we talk about incentives, this becomes really important.  If a network is free, if a social network is free now, it's not really, you essentially, are the product, they're selling you something they're selling your data, they're not working for you.  And even some of these networks that are hybrid, now, LinkedIn and Twitter, some people pay, some people don't, even if you pay, they're still sending you ads, and they're still taking your data that matters not just because of the fact that ads are annoying, and they are or that you deserve privacy, which you do.  But it means that their incentives are to keep you online as long as possible, because that makes them money.  And whatever they have to do to do that.  It's, it's part of what they need to do.  So that that got away from me a little bit.  But what I what I mean to say is, find networks that are going to be on your side and then are going to treat you like a customer or any human being.  And if you can't, and you're stuck using networks that that are going to treat you that way.  I think just being aware of that and having an awareness that that that is what's happening, and not sort of, you know, going through it and thinking that they're on your side, or that they have your back or that they're looking after the people you care about.  on that happy note.

TW.  If you enjoyed hearing about the rise and fall of AOL Instant Messenger, look out for upcoming episodes on MySpace G-Chat and Clubhouse. 

TW.  In the meantime, we'll post a transcript of this episode with references on our website.  You can find this and more information about us at TheBrightApp.com. 

TW.  Until next time, I'm Taryn Ward.  Thank you for joining us for Breaking the feed, Social Media Beyond the Headlines.