Sunday, September 26, 2010
The Displacement of AIM
Throughout our generation it seems that many forms of social media have come and gone. Sconex was kicked to the curb after the introduction of MySpace, and MySpace met its demise at the hands of Facebook, and even Facebook is currently battling Twitter, the current fastest growing social media, for the position of "#1 Internet Social Media". Before all of these, however, was AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM. This was an istant messaging program by AOL that provided users with immediate communication when online. AIM was the most popular social networking media for my peers and I from elementary to highschool. It even survived well into the Facebook age, until Facebook developed FB Chat that is. Facebook chat is basically instant messaging on the facebook profile that can get in contact with any of your Facebook Friends when they are online. Since Facebook adopted this upgrade, the user rate of AIM has dwindled closer and closer to "non-existant". I am probably one of the very few that still have the AIM application on my phone, a T-Mobile Sidekick LX, and that is only because I am very nostalgic and try to cling to the remnants of my childhood. If only a lot more people felt the way I did AIM would be doing a lot better.
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It's an interesting observation you make about AIM. I still have AIM and I actually linked it with Facebook, so when I sign in to AIM I can also chat directly with Facebook friends. Best of both worlds! I personally feel that AIM and other social networking media have dwindled because they lack the benefits of having a one-stop site to go and do everything. People love things that continue to offer new add-ons, they dislike having several things for similar functions when you can have one site to do all those functions.
ReplyDeleteI have found that the medium I have replaced AIM with is skype. I think it has to do more with its superior video capabilities and having a more user friendly interface that doesnt glitch quite as often. I have seen the option to link the AIM to facebook but had no idea what it was about so I never did it.
ReplyDeleteBradley, this is a much better post than your one on women. One problem with AIM an older friend told me is that when it was on top, it didn't want to link up to other messaging systems like Yahoo's and others. As a result, people found sites like Facebook as you said, and AIM only reluctantly opened up its system after it was too late. This is similar to MySpace finally getting around to working with Facebook; when MySpace was on top, they closely guarded their system and wouldn't work with others either. People moved on and now they have to. One thing about Facebook is that they get it - they have been quick to spread Facebook over the internet so that you can "like" sites all over the place. Facebook also lets you link to AIM, as Robert said, and also lets you publish RSS feeds to it from Blogger (hint, hint) and other places. While it is still in many ways a closed system, it seems very serious about growing with its audience instead of stagnating, like MySpace and AIM.
ReplyDeleteIt's hilarious that you call yourself nostalgic, but you're closely engaged with social media--the newest media form existing. How young people's definition of "nostalgia" have changed! :)
ReplyDeleteInteresting post. I appreciate your knowledge about the ups and downs of these media brands and I would like to read more about why and how exactly they fail or rise. To find out why and how--you have to no longer remain a social media consumer, but become more of an analyst and do a little bit of backgound research. So get your feet dirty and bring in some outside support.
c.e.