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  >  I think AIM had and still has the ability to be
  > the ‘w’ of the modern internet
AIM is only really popular in the US. That's not surprising once you fully expand the name: "America On-Line Instant Messenger."

I'm curious:

* What AIM has that other IM client/networks (MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, GTalk, etc) don't?

* What is AOL doing to increase up-take of AIM outside of the US?

* How stable AIM can be going forward when AOL itself isn't exactly the paragon of stability?



AIM is also used loads in the dance music production scene to send/swap music files.


The AIM comment really stuck out to me as strange. AIM is fine, but hardly special relative to its many competitors. His link goes to a preview page for (I guess) a new version of AIM with fancy things like twitter integration, but I don't really see that mattering much.

If anything, to throw my anecdotal evidence into the ring, AIM was big in my middle- through high-school experience, but most of my friends have dropped it as adults. Its uses back then were "hey, saw you were online, let's chat" and occasionally leaving short-term messages not worth an email or a call. It's have been replaced by facebook chat and texting for those uses respectively. I'm not a fan of facebook chat compared to an AIM client (desktop-based or web-based), but what're you gonna do?




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