Friday marks the last day for AOL Instant ... and Facebook's Messenger. While chances are you haven't used AIM in a decade, spare a thought on this Friday for your first screen name, buddy list ...

It’s a sad moment: AIM, AOL’s long-running instant messenger service ... arcane things like screen names. In fact, Facebook has multiple billion-user messaging services at this point ...

It enabled any two people anywhere to type messages to each other in real time. ICQ was a prototype instant messaging (IM) system that within two years had 11 million users. It attracted the attention ...