According to Computerworld, which obtained clarification from AOL noted, “We are not killing instant messenger,” an AOL spokeswoman responded late Wednesday afternoon. “We will continue to support and evolve the product.”
There was some misunderstanding earlier today when another technology news site SlashGear reported that AOL’s instant messenger, AIM, is about to be “shut down for good.” The report also mentioned that there would be no further upgrades to the software.
The chaos began when an AOL official originally predicted that a fix to the spam problem could be rolled out on Thursday of last week, but the process took a bit longer, finally culminating on Tuesday.
And now, the interoperability between the two IM networks is now active and everything is “running smoothly,” an AOL spokeswoman said via e-mail.
This suggests that users signed into the Google network can also participate in IM sessions with users who are on the AIM network. In fact, without the interoperability, people need to have individual accounts for both services, using the Google account to communicate with users on Google’s network and the AIM account for communicating with users on the AIM network.
Another source close to AOL informed Computerworld that Jason Shellen, who heads up AIM product group, is leaving the company. AOL also laid off about 40 employees from the AIM group, according to the source.
However, the AOL spokeswoman said that does not mean that AOL is getting rid of AIM. As a matter of fact, earlier today, Google and AOL reinstated interoperability between their two instant messaging networks. The move came about two weeks after the connection was temporarily suspended due to a spam flood originating in AOL’s service that affected Gmail Chat and Google Talk users.
Moreover, AOL Instant Messenger was born out of the Buddy List feature that was part of the AOL dial-up service. In 1997, AIM became an independent service and allowed users to communicate with AOL and non-AOL users alike. In 1998, AOL acquired competitor ICQ and combined some of those features into the app itself. Later, AOL sold ICQ in 2010.
Surprisingly though, as recently as 2006, AIM still had a large audience in the social messaging space. But Gtalk, Facebook and Skype continue to capture marketshare away from AIM. As a protocol, AIM is still supported by a wide-array of messaging apps (and it provides the basis for Apple’s now deprecated iChat), but the service’s glory days are long gone.
Besides, Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but when communicated last week about this issue, a Google spokeswoman deferred comment to AOL.
Also, the AOL spokeswoman declined to comment about the layoff reports.