• AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM, is a free internet messenger service sponsored and developed by AOL and is available for use on many operating system's, including Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows and Linux. It is a very popular Instant Messaging client and has one of the biggest user bases of all the instant messaging clients.

• Fast Facts

  1. Introduced: 1997
  2. Users: 60 Million+
  3. Current Version: AIM 6.1

• History

  AIM was originally developed and distributed in 1997-1998 upon the buy-out of ICQ. Each of these clients was treated as separate and never gained interoperability with each other.

• Features

  AOL Instant Messenger is a fully feature instant messaging client. It features status messages, video conferencing and a host of other unique features. Since the beginning, it has supported person-to-person chat, but most recently they have begun development on new features to allow larger conversations. In 2003, iChat was released which was the very first instant messaging client that was able to use the AIM protocol.

• Competitors

  AOL Instant Messenger has a lot of competition in the instant messaging area. Competitors include [[Yahoo! Messenger]], ICQ, Google Talk, and Windows Live Messenger. Almost all of these instant messaging clients support similar features as AIM.

• Related Mahalo Pages

  Skype | Google | ICQ | [[ Yahoo! Messenger]] | AOL | Gmail | How to Monitor Your Child's Text Messages

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