Its service was spread mostly by freebie floppy discs, and it was competing hard against the likes of Prodigy and CompuServe, in an effort to become the dominant ISP in North America. It should be remembered that AOL was a consumer focused firm. Bosco had at this time been promoted to a management position and reportedly had to fight to keep management from pulling the plug on AIM. This allowed registered users to communicate in real time.ĪIM was initially integrated into AOL Desktop, but such was its popularity that AOL took the decision to release AIM as a stand-alone download in May 1997 for the Windows platform.ĭespite this early success, AOL management were unconvinced that a free product was of any value to the firm. When AIM was created, AOL used the proprietary Open System for CommunicAtion in Realtime (OSCAR) messaging protocol. Indeed, on the first night the executable code was downloaded over 900 times as the word spread of this product. Word started to spread, and downloads of AIM grew. But the AOL FTP platform was immensely popular with users, who soon noticed the AIM product sitting there. Indeed, AIM was unceremoniously put on one of the company’s file transfer protocols (FTP), a common way for files to be moved from one computer to another over the Internet.ĪIM didn’t even have its own webpage, from which it could be downloaded. So AOL quietly released AIM in May 1997 with very little fanfare. It took the strong backing of the development team to get approval for the launch of AIM. Indeed, AOL management reportedly wanted to kill off AIM and even considered firing Appelman.
It went against the company’s entire ethos. AOL management did not want to offer a product free of charge.
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