It's not time to write AIM's obituary just yet

20 hrs.

Rosa Golijan

This morning I was idly browsing through some of my favorite websites when I spotted a post declaring that "AIM is (unofficially) dead."?My blood froze in my veins. AIM. AOL Instant Messenger. The chat protocol so many of my friends use. It couldn't be!

And as I read on, I realized: It wasn't.

After the rather terrifying headline, Gizmodo's Sam Biddle ? a dear former colleague of mine ? explained?that?a report in the New York Times reveals? AOL made some significant staff cuts. The AOL Instant Messenger group suffered the most,?described as "eviscerated" and consisting only "support staff."

"Support staff only means no more developers," Biddle points out. "No more developers means no more new software. No more new software means AIM stops growing and changing forever."

When I got to those words, my fear mostly dissipated. Biddle was right ??it sounds as if no new AIM software will be developed by AOL ??but he was also wrong: Just because AOL might not build new pretty AIM applications doesn't mean AIM will stop growing and changing.

Think about it. When we say "AIM," we're not actually talking about?the applications made by AOL. We're actually referring to the OSCAR and TOC instant messaging protocols which run the show. And those protocols are used by messaging clients such as Adium, iChat, Trillian, Pidgin and many more. (This isn't surprising since AOL handed the documentation for the OSCAR protocols to the open source community in 2008 and TOC was essentially created for third-party apps.)

What all this comes down to is that the folks behind all the third-party clients many of us use to access "AIM" won't be forced to stop developing their products just because AOL might stop raising its own child.

AIM, as we see it, will continue to live and grow. And who knows? Maybe it'll even blossom once out of AOL's shadow.?

--

Want more tech news, silly puns, or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.

Source: http://www.technolog.msnbc.msn.com/technology/technolog/its-not-time-write-aims-obituary-just-yet-441991

light field camera world series game 1 exotic animals exotic animals scott hall collegeboard coco rocha