Hacker News Reader

> Then, I need to find a second to let them know of this (unless I either totally drop the ball or consciously decide to not reply).

This seems strange to me. I view IM as asynchronous. If someone messages me while I'm busy, I'll just reply later. And I don't expect people to answer immediatly. No need to sync to chat together (of course if we're both available we can chat in sync).

IM didn't used to be like that because we didn't have clients on our phones. An "online" status meant that someone was sitting at their computer and happy to chat (or they'd have the client closed).

Or you would set your status to "appear offline"

From memory AIM/MSN didn't even have offline messaging. If someone was offline, you either waited for them to be online, or you would contact them via email/txt/landline.

I remember AIM having the ability to forward messages to SMS when you were offline, and Pidgin had the ability to "pounce" someone, which would queue up a message to send them next time they logged on.

Pidgin - now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time!

Made me immediately think of Adium, which I used to talk on MSM via my mac because the official client was woeful.

Libpurple was friggin excellent.

AIM eventually got offline messaging; I beleive with AIM 6.0 that launched in late 2006.

I think all my friends had moved to google talk and text messaging by 2006.

I almost never use IM on my phone, but nevertheless messaging is, and always was, async for me as well. From what I recall, it was like that back in ICQ days in late 90s already. And it was a very refreshing change from phone calls, where you had to either respond or ignore the call.

ICQ was like that since the mid 90's.

ICQ had offline messaging, though.

Honestly that's my point (and perhaps I should have been more clear about it).

I think in hindsight I vastly prefer synchronous chat- which is why I pointed out in the beginning that AIM was the closest online communication to in-person communication.

With asynchronous communication you do need to be much more proactive in how you handle your 'threads'. As I mentioned before, you need to remember or decide to reply _eventually_. It's also possible that in the meantime your thread (basically 1:1 communication with a person) will fork off (i.e. you share a tweet with someone in Twitter while simultaneously having an asynchronous conversation about some other topic in iMessages).

The “asynchronous” chat apps are designed to basically be synchronous. And aggressively so.

That’s why you have that aggressive red notification badge with the number of unread messages that your brain requires you to get rid of. That’s why when someone sends you a message, the default is to aggressively slide a notification with the message no matter what you’re doing.

Indeed, if I want synchronous chat, I'll make a phone call. If I want a response at some point I'll send a message.

This was talking on the phone for people who don't like talking on the phone. If that makes any sense.

This makes perfect sense to me. I don't know what it is about talking on the phone, but it's an extremely anxiety inducing experience for me. I'm generally fine with people, but if I have a choice of walking down the street to talk with them in person or call them on the phone, I will make the walk every time.

Best I can figure out it stems from being verbally abused as a teenager when I had a job making cold calls. People are vicious on the phone in a way they never are in person. Some people seem to use strangers on the phone as an opportunity to safely vent whatever pent-up rage they have. And even though people are just as vicious online, it just doesn't have the same bite as it does when it's a human voice filled with rage.

I'm the same way, sans the cold calling experience. Would much rather drive down to talk to someone at the counter vs. calling the business from home.

> Best I can figure out it stems from being verbally abused as a teenager when I had a job making cold calls. People are vicious on the phone in a way they never are in person.

Or maybe people are vicious when they receive unsolicited spam calls.

I don’t have the cold calling experience, but I view phone conversation the same way you do.

No idea why - and it baffles my extrovert spouse.

The thing is that this makes it almost impossible to chat to people over text these days. If you try it, it's an infuriating experience where you wait several minutes for a reply every time. In the old days, you could actually have a text conversation with someone on MSN messenger.

yeah, for me treating im as asynchronous is redundant. that’s why we had email. aim was a phone call. but i also treat it asynchronous these days and might even step away from a conversation mid thought. i hate when i do it but it’s a very bad habit encouraged by the apps. ah well

I hate that it is asynchronous now. I liked it back before when you talked to someone who was online and you knew he was engaged in the conversation. Now all of that is gone. As you say "I'll just reply later"—I hate that.

When you saw someone on AIM, at least during dialup days, it meant you will get his/her attention. They were logged into engage in real-time conversation. You just don’t have that level of communication anymore. Most online conversations are asynchronous.

There's always https://honk.me/ if you're feeling youthful

the AIM era suffered from the duplication of messengers. I remember using Trillian to merge aim/icq/msn and later Pidgin.

Also, I forgot how to register on aim but i'm pretty sure it wasn't tied to name or phone number :) such a wild life

I really miss them too. I loved the fact that you had to organize with your friends to connect at the same time to to chat via MSN. I hate the fact that now I am reachable to wherever I am on my phone through Whatsapp. Of course, it has a lot of advantages, but the my nostalgic sides misses the point that I was able to receive messages only if I was on the computer (or if I left it turn it on with the monitor off, without my parents knowing it)

I feel like this was more due to how we used computers at the time rather than AIM itself. You can still set your status on most messaging platforms, but we're now always online and people assume you'll respond later if you're too busy.

Up until the early 2000's, most people were still getting online using a dial-up connection on a PC. That meant you had to make a conscious decision to get online and block off your phone line for other purposes. At least for me, the very fact that I was online meant that I wasn't busy and was open to chatting with my friends.

I wonder how much AIM cost to operate? Did it really need to shut down? Last I checked AOL was still operating and offering various free services. AIM certainly had a user base that might have continued and even grown.