AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) is an instant messaging and presence computer program which uses the proprietary OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow registered users to communicate in real time. It was released by AOL in May 1997. Stand-alone official AIM client software includes advertisements and is available for Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile, Mac OS, Mac OS X, Android, iOS, BlackBerry OS. The software, maintained by AOL, Inc., at one time had the largest share of the instant messaging market in North America, especially in the United States (with 52% of the total reported as of 2006). This does not include other instant messaging software related to or developed by AOL, such as ICQ and iChat. As of June 2011, one reported market share had collapsed to 0.73%. However, this number only reflects installed IM applications, and not active users.
Read more about AOL Instant Messenger: Protocol, Privacy, Chat Robots, URI Scheme, Vulnerabilities
Famous quotes containing the words instant and/or messenger:
“The end will come quickly, my love. There is a pain beyond pain, an agony so intense it shocks the mind into instant oblivion. We’ll find immortality together, for they’ll remember me through you.”
—Crane Wilbur (1889–1973)
“O you singers solitary, singing by yourself, projecting me,
O solitary me listening, never more shall I cease perpetuating you
Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations,
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Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what
there in the night,
By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon,
The messenger there aroused, the fire, the sweet hell within,
The unknown want, the destiny of me.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)