"Can't We All Just Get Along?" Awards

[Jeff]

AOL Instant Messenger won the dubious honor of first place in Steven Levy's "Can't We All Just Get Along?" Awards. Here's what Levy has to say about AIM:

"America Online, for shamefully maintaining AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) as a closed system. Users can't swap messages freely with all other IM systems, like those of Yahoo or Microsoft (which recently agreed to work together). For years, AOL has also invoked that same lame "our customers aren't asking for it" excuse (as well as a bogus excuse about security). We're supposed to believe that people don't want to send IMs to whomever they chose? Come on. What makes AOL's stance even worse is that when it was trying to persuade the FTC to allow the Time Warner merger, it promised to make AIM work with others. Now that the disastrous deal has been implemented, AOL no longer even pretends it's interested in letting AIM users talk to everybody else."

Jeers to AOL for telling IM users to shove it. Let's hope they read the writing on the wall and open their network up for true interoperability.

Source: Newsweek

[DragonSlayerz]

Pretty sweet Hooray for AIM for getting along

[Tigerblade]

Um... you realize this "award" isn't really an award. It's more of a way of pointing out that AIM sucks and hasn't done anything truly useful or productive in ages. With each "upgrade," they force more and more "features" on users, while the service gets worse and worse. Ads get more overpowering and more invasive, the buddylist window gets more cluttered, and the overall experience gets worse. With Microsoft and Yahoo agreeing to let users on each network communicate with each other (without the need of a 3rd party interop program like Trillian), AIM is quickly getting left behind. The only reason it's still hanging on is because there are a lot of clueless users who barely know how to turn on their computers but use AIM because that's what all their friends use.

It's not a distinction anyone wants.

[MrEggsalad]

Yeah, heh I'd give it this award too, I mean...it's AIM who doesn't want to work with anyone, just get everything for themselves. The only thing keeping me using on their network is my stubborn friends who won't change to anything else.

[DrBroccoli]

It's not wonder AOL is going to the grave, not only do they only offer Dial-Up service, they also overcharge and have a horrible messenger, that they seemed to seemed to get into every person without computer sense's head that it is the best. On a side note, I actually read the article, I was reading a Newsweek at school and noticed this title, then I saw it here.