The truth that the corporate previously referred to 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 little thing Nineties, from the dial-up sound to the unrealistically spam-free romcom You have Obtained Mail to the ever-present CDs to the previously AOL-owned CompuServe homepage (which, amazingly, nonetheless carries at this time’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 brought on the dotcom collapse).
AOL wasn’t outlined by dial-up, a know-how all the time 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 may have change into an additional A within the FAANG group, aka at this time’s tech titans. Think about:
1. AOL Immediate Messenger was principally Messenger, WhatsApp and Slack, in a single.
Ah, good previous AIM. What number of hours did I waste on it within the 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 Immediate 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 Immediate Messaging discovered the enjoyable and pleasant kind we’re nonetheless utilizing at this time in a dozen apps, from WhatsApp to WeChat. The Buddy checklist and buddy icons made it really feel like Fb Messenger, many years earlier than that was a factor (Meta, satirically, now holds the unique AIM patent for a mates checklist). 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 at this time. The service pioneered emoticons (no person known as them emoji but). Years earlier than you might 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 talent 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 shortly.
“AIM grew to become how Wall Road communicated,” considered one of AIM’s founders informed 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 at this time I discover in iMessage kind. It additionally had the agony and nervousness of being left on learn by a crush — solely this model got here with a brutal door-closing noise.
AOL well determined to provide AIM away without spending a dime. It was open-source sufficient that you might message AIM customers on its predominant rival, MSN Messenger. You did not should be inside AOL’s walled backyard web to make use of AIM, so tens of millions extra did. Dial-up AOL maxed out at 30 million customers. At its top in 2001, 61 million individuals used AIM; it did not actually begin to decline till GMail exploded in recognition, bringing GChat with it.
Arguably, if AOL had targeted on AIM because the web’s killer app as a substitute of seeing it as a strategy to convert individuals into dial-up subscribers, it may have change into the one messaging commonplace that each 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 providers.
2. SmarterChild was an early AI chatbot.
AIM was massive sufficient as a platform that third-party corporations developed groundbreaking providers for it. Working example: A startup known 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 mentioned 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 may chat endlessly about baseball stats, films, and the rain in Cleveland; for some customers, that was sufficient to duplicate 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 at this time’s humor-free AIs may be taught a factor or two from.
3. AOL Chat Rooms was proto-Twitter.
The notorious AOL Chat Rooms, the place you might chat to dozens of strangers without delay, predate even AIM, although they shortly grew to become a part of it. Utilization exploded in 1996, when AOL switched from hourly billing to month-to-month, that means you might spend as a lot time in them as you want. (That is proper, you may as well thank AOL for the fashionable innovation of month-to-month web billing.)
The outcome was … nicely, each bit as poisonous because the worst of social media at this time. 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 could have needed to wait till the twenty first century for the phrase “slide into your DMs,” however that is what was occurring in all places in AOL Chat Rooms.
As for moderators? Properly, Chat Rooms made Elon Musk’s hellscape model of Twitter seem like a well-moderated city sq. debate. AOL relied solely on volunteers to police as much as 60 million customers. Up to date stories described the hassle as a “cyber sweat store.”
4. Usenet was principally 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, referred to as newsgroups, from earlier many years of computing. Newsgroup veterans would complain concerning the inflow of newbies, often college laptop division freshmen, each September. The arrival of AOL’s horde of customers was such an ongoing disaster that the old-timers known as it Everlasting September.
We would name it one thing else: the beginnings of Reddit and different notorious message boards, akin to 4Chan. The outcome 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 specialists, journalists and celebrities, the place the questions have been all user-generated —a Reddit AMA, principally.
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 consumer pursuits it had began to look slightly like MySpace, or LinkedIn, by the point it shuttered in 2009. On the operations aspect, AOL needed to construct up its knowledge middle infrastructure so quick that the realm of Virgina it grew up in is now referred to as Information Middle Alley; a lot of the world’s web visitors flows by means of it.
Subsequent time you click on on a fast-loading website, then, spare a thought for the dial-up individuals.
