Today AIM was discontinued.

I bought my first computer in 1995, and I was such a newbie to the digital revolution that I enrolled in a Windows class in adult school.

Like almost everybody who connected to the Internet in the late 90`s I was an AOL subscriber, and I still hear the dial-up sound in my nightmares.

In those days I communicated with friends and colleagues via AOL Instant Messenger which originally was available only to AOL subscribers, of course that was an era when AOL was king of the world wide web. AOL was released as a stand-alone download in May 1997.

The AIM yellow running man was one of the most recognizable advertising icons of the 1990s. The little yellow running man was a perfect symbol for the slow dial-up Internet service, today`s broadband service would best be represented by a yellow blur.

I communicated with family living in other states, and made my first virtual friends on AIM. AIM is like your first lover, you only remember the good qualities.

Snapchat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and cellphone SMS are light years ahead of AIM, but AIM will always have a special place in my heart.

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