[veridies]

I still used AIM up until today. My friends and I just switched over to a private XMPP server, and we've been using Pidgin/Adium anyway, so it's not a huge change. AIM has been extremely reliable, I've been able to use it on every platform I've ever owned (usually with free software), and it's easy to end-to-end encrypt messages.

My friends and I just never saw a reason to move away from AIM. Everyone just decided to switch to things that were newer for novelty's sake, and transferred their friendships and conversations into non-private, non-free systems. Even Google, which at first used an open protocol, moved to a siloed system while adding nothing of much value (as evidenced by Google's low share of the messaging market). And now to talk to people I have to switch between Google, Skype, Apple, and Facebook, all of whom inter-compatible systems, all of whom reneged on their promises, and none of whom offer me any value whatsoever.

This is not a happy day for me.

[esotericsean]

You'll still be able to use AIM if you setup a private server? I need to look into this.

[veridies]

As nyolfen mentioned, XMPP is just a competing, decentralized protocol for AIM-like chat. It has a similar feature set and works with most third-party AIM clients.

[aninteger]

If you ever get around to making a private OSCAR based server and publish the code somewhere please let us know.

[nyolfen]

no, xmpp is not aim