The truth that the corporate previously often known as America On-line will discontinue its Dial-up service subsequent month has prompted two sorts of reactions on the web that it pioneered.
First: Wait, AOL Dial-up service nonetheless exists? Second: A wave of nostalgia for every part Nineteen Nineties, from the dial-up sound to the unrealistically spam-free romcom You have Received Mail to the ever-present CDs to the previously AOL-owned CompuServe homepage (which, amazingly, nonetheless carries immediately’s information in soothing low-image kind).
However there is a response we’re lacking, and it is not concerning the cautionary story of AOL’s rise and fall (belief me, I do know; I used to be there for the pivot between rise and fall, and a purchase order that arguably triggered the dotcom collapse).
AOL wasn’t outlined by dial-up, a know-how at all times destined for the canines, however by all of the tech it pioneered. AOL is not our nostalgic tech previous; it’s in some ways our current. The options it pioneered dominate our tech lives in 2025.
Certainly, the corporate was unfortunate to have arrived within the period of the CD, and to not final into the period of the smartphone. Had it not gone on a deadly get-big-fast acquisition romp, it is easy to think about AOL might have grow to be an additional A within the FAANG group, aka immediately’s tech titans. Think about:
1. AOL Instantaneous Messenger was mainly Messenger, WhatsApp and Slack, in a single.
Ah, good previous AIM. What number of hours did I waste on it within the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s? Greater than on iChat and GChat, my subsequent obsessions. Many, many greater than I did on Web Relay Chat and ICQ — two earlier, much less user-friendly types of the identical Instantaneous Messaging concept. ICQ was purchased by AOL in 1998, an early instance of the shopping for spree strategy to competitors. This was, it turned out, pointless; AIM was merely the higher product.
AIM was the place Instantaneous Messaging discovered the enjoyable and pleasant kind we’re nonetheless utilizing immediately in a dozen apps, from WhatsApp to WeChat. The Buddy listing and buddy icons made it really feel like Fb Messenger, many years earlier than that was a factor (Meta, sarcastically, now holds the unique AIM patent for a pals listing). AIM had group messaging (not the identical because the wild west of Chat Rooms, we’ll get to these).
Messages on AIM regarded like each message you ship immediately. The service pioneered emoticons (no person referred to as them emoji but). Years earlier than you may a lot as textual content a photograph, AIM had multimedia messaging. It additionally had file-sharing, enabling doubtful buying and selling of MP3s earlier than anybody heard about Napster.
And AIM pioneered the Away standing, one which my workmates would take note of, lengthy earlier than Slack. AIM’s ability at routing messages round blocked ports made it the bane of company IT departments, and a delight for plugged-in employees who wanted to speak rapidly.
“AIM grew to become how Wall Road communicated,” one among AIM’s founders advised Mashable in 2014.
Mashable Gentle Velocity
However AIM was for pleasure as a lot as for work. It had all of the spontaneous evening-spent-chatting pleasure that immediately I discover in iMessage kind. It additionally had the agony and anxiousness of being left on learn by a crush — solely this model got here with a brutal door-closing noise.
AOL neatly determined to present AIM away without spending a dime. It was open-source sufficient that you may message AIM customers on its foremost rival, MSN Messenger. You did not must be inside AOL’s walled backyard web to make use of AIM, so thousands and thousands extra did. Dial-up AOL maxed out at 30 million customers. At its peak in 2001, 61 million folks used AIM; it did not actually begin to decline till GMail exploded in reputation, bringing GChat with it.
Arguably, if AOL had centered on AIM because the web’s killer app as a substitute of seeing it as a solution to convert folks into dial-up subscribers, it might have grow to be the one messaging customary that every one different apps should use. And we as customers would have a way more open-source messaging panorama, as a substitute of utilizing a number of siloed companies.
2. SmarterChild was an early AI chatbot.
AIM was giant sufficient as a platform that third-party firms developed groundbreaking companies for it. Living proof: A startup referred to as ActiveBuddy and SmarterChild, a chatbot that was on 30 million Buddy lists six months after its beginning.
With out realizing what it was doing, in different phrases, AOL gave as many individuals entry to early AI because it did to dial-up. This has a direct influence on Apple’s AI assistant: one early investor in Siri stated he was impressed by the potential of SmarterChild.
It wasn’t precisely GPT-5, however SmarterChild had entry to huge databases: IMdB, the Climate Channel, Elias Sports activities Bureau. It might chat endlessly about baseball stats, motion pictures, and the rain in Cleveland; for some customers, that was sufficient to copy an fascinating human being.
For others, particularly its youthful buddies, SmarterChild got here alive with its library of sassy responses (the work of one sardonic copywriter). It will, for instance, browbeat you into an apology in case you dared swear — one thing immediately’s humor-free AIs might study a factor or two from.
3. AOL Chat Rooms was proto-Twitter.
The notorious AOL Chat Rooms, the place you may chat to dozens of strangers without delay, predate even AIM, although they rapidly grew to become a part of it. Utilization exploded in 1996, when AOL switched from hourly billing to month-to-month, which means you may spend as a lot time in them as you want. (That is proper, you can too thank AOL for the fashionable innovation of month-to-month web billing.)
The end result was … properly, each bit as poisonous because the worst of social media immediately. Nameless handles yelled all-caps insults at one another, and never simply within the political rooms. Creeps trying to “cyber” invaded each room, asking for the a(ge)/s(ex)/l(ocation) of the unsuspecting. We might have needed to wait till the twenty first century for the phrase “slide into your DMs,” however that is what was occurring in every single place in AOL Chat Rooms.
As for moderators? Nicely, Chat Rooms made Elon Musk’s hellscape model of Twitter appear to be a well-moderated city sq. debate. AOL relied totally on volunteers to police as much as 60 million customers. Modern studies described the trouble as a “cyber sweat store.”
4. Usenet was mainly Reddit.
Even earlier than AIM and Chat Rooms, in 1993, AOL was the primary client web firm to supply entry to Usenet. This was a as soon as sleepy set of boards, often known as newsgroups, from earlier many years of computing. Newsgroup veterans would complain concerning the inflow of newbies, often college pc division freshmen, each September. The arrival of AOL’s horde of customers was such an ongoing disaster that the old-timers referred to as it Everlasting September.
We’d name it one thing else: the beginnings of Reddit and different notorious message boards, resembling 4Chan. The end result was arguably worse; some Redditors miss the previous Usenet. Then got here AOL Chat, hosted on AIM however not a daily Chat Room. It was a moderated Q&A with consultants, journalists and celebrities, the place the questions have been all user-generated —a Reddit AMA, mainly.
And there have been extra AOL improvements. There was AOL Hometown, a GeoCities-style place for constructing web sites with out HTML data; with its stock of person pursuits it had began to look a bit like MySpace, or LinkedIn, by the point it shuttered in 2009. On the operations facet, AOL needed to construct up its knowledge middle infrastructure so quick that the realm of Virgina it grew up in is now often known as Information Heart Alley; a lot of the world’s web site visitors flows by way of it.
Subsequent time you click on on a fast-loading web site, then, spare a thought for the dial-up folks.
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