ICQ is closing down. It was really at its height in 2000 and that is when we integrated ICQ into Opera. We made a small (5k) client and it worked really well.
AOL had purchased ICQ and they were concerned about MSN taking users from them by connecting to their service, so they stopped supporting 3rd party clients. We contacted them, to see if they would make an exception for us, but they did not.
They said that if we removed our 5k client, we could maybe discuss bundling their client, but it was bigger than Opera, so that was not going to happen.
"We can reverse the enshittification of the internet. We can halt the creeping enshittification of every digital device. We can build a better, enshittification-resistant digital nervous system, one that is fit to co-ordinate the mass movements we will need to fight fascism, end genocide, save our planet and our species."
You guys havin' trouble on yer dial up? My modem's been squawkin' and squeelin' fer like minutes and I can't get logged into AOL's Food Chat. #TheStruggleIsReal#JustTheFax #AOL#Foodies
For some reason yesterday I was thinking about ancient AOL history -- Hecklers Online! There are still traces of it on the internet, it seems. #hecklersonline#aol
So, #AOL is trying to sell subscriptions to their browser (presumably Chromium-based, but I could not be bothered to dig) for what they figure is worth $6.99/mo.
I just found out that #AOL#chatrooms didn't shut down until December of 2020. They were up all that time!!! I wish I'd known - I would've looked for a way to connect.
People like to joke that AOL wasn't the "real" internet, and maybe it wasn't, but it really was ahead of its time as far as features. I'd love another service like that today!
What if the real #Fedipact was that the whole #Fediverse exclusively set AOL.com as their homepage and used AOL for all their web searches from now until 1st January 2024 to really confuse #AOL employees when they returned back to work. They'd think it was 2001 again.
almost 9 years later and I'm still passing around Casey West's "Durable Communication" post as the gold standard on advice for leading distributed teams. (Any #perl folks know if cwest is out here in the Fediverse somewhere?) http://caseywest.com/durable-communication/
#Threads coming to the #Fediverse reminds me of #AOL opening up to the Web: A move democratizing a technology (The web; #ActivityPub ) but also with some challenges to established norms as the masses arrive.
Listening to the first episode of @mike ‘s new podcast “Dot Social” on decentralized social networking with guest @mmasnick. They start off with discussion of his 2019 paper “Protocols, Not Platforms” and how, all of a sudden, the stagnant big social platforms are now being bypassed with rapid innovation by developers all over the fediverse.
@mike brings up a compelling argument for the #fediverse in a historical analogy with #aol: all the innovation around, say, travel in the closed AOL system back then could only come from AOL and whatever they could think up. It took the protocol-not-platform-centric decentralized web to catalyze the much broader innovation we’ve seen since, e.g. AirBnb is hard to imagine having been invented inside a closed system like AOL.
Tiens, je vous propose une petite expérience : j'ai ressorti des étagères ce Guide des meilleurs sites Web, édition 2000, paru chez Microsoft Press il y a de cela 23 ans.
Je vous propose de l'explorer page par page au cours des mois qui viennent et de découvrir combien des sites listés sont encore accessibles.
D'abord parce que ça va m'occuper, ensuite par curiosité, et avoir une idée de la portion du Web qui a survécu à ses 23 dernières années.
On attaque donc la 4e page du #Web2000, consacrée cette fois à un service qui n'existe quasiment plus : le #portail.
Ces sites qui regroupaient actualité, bourse, horoscope, service comme accès "unique" et centralisé au Web.
Des 10 portails proposés :
3 existent encore sous une forme proche : #AOL (version US), Yahoo! et #Excite.
3 sont aujourd'hui des fantômes : #Lycos, #Netscape (redirigé vers Yahoo!) et Go.com servant de page de liste des services #Disney
It was a simpler time - the "Links" section of AOL's "The Hub" website, 1998. I designed this section when I worked there. Imagine the innocent joy of both soliciting web links, and explaining what a URL is. The page has 2 animated GIF elements, which means we were ahead of the curve. #thehub#aol
#AOL proggies and punters. I was big into these in the 90s during the AOL 3.0 and 4.0.days. AOHell was great for making accounts with fake credit card numbers for infinite free online hours. Eventually your account would be banned but you'd just make another one.
Punters would send html encoded spam to your victim via IMs causing their computer to freeze up. As an angsty young teen I did this to countless people.
Even Mark Zuckerberg got in on proggies back in the day!
Folks around here asking if anyone's ever had a ✨CRUSH✨ on someone met via Fedi.
Meanwhile my ancient bones are over here recalling my first online crush; a gorgeous redheaded girl from Texas who I was head-over-heels for, met on America Online in 1995.
The Aol Chat Room Monitor Revolt
"The Aol Chat Room Monitor Revolt" (https://priceonomics.com/the-aol-chat-room-monitor-revolt/)...