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AOL Locks Out AIM Screen Names
dshaw858 writes "According to a story on eWeek, AOL has mistakenly suspended a very large number of AOL Instant Messenger (one of the most widely used IM programs) accounts, by mistake. I don't know about you guys, but this happened to me and a large percentage of friends and coworkers. AOL says that a fix should be ready by Monday."
Why would they suspend accounts in the first place? I've never heard of anything like this. I guess the accounts of the IM spammers could be susceptible to suspension. Other than that, what else?
Um, I don't think the AIM "monopoly" is anywhere near the size of the Windows monopoly. I personally don't know *anyone* that uses AIM - if we were to choose a monopoly I would say it's either ICQ or MSN Messenger (with the latter increasing in usage recently). Personally, all my contacts use ICQ (geeks and non-geeks alike).
Jabber is actually getting kinda huge. You wouldn't know it because it's going the opposite route of most open source software... it's getting big in the enterprise first. Lots of big (and I mean BIG) companies that don't want to allow their users open IM access use jabber for internal communications.
It has relatively huge industry support, believe it or not.
I have lived in three different countries and this is what I have noticed
All my American friends use AIM
All my Philipino friends uses Yahoo Messenger
All my Australian Friends uses MSN (used to be ICQ a few years ago)
In each respective country I have never seen any else ask for another network besides that and thinks noone uses the other networks (eg. While living in philippines almost everyone asked for Y!, while atm in australia everyone assumes you use MSN)
So it depends on the country really...
But, once again, this has nothing to do with the protocol...
I agree that this incident was an administrative cock-up, but I'm saying that the design is flawed by the fact that the user's are not given the chance to choose their AIM service provider (or indeed run their own server) - if the user decides that AOL are not competent enough to run the server they have no choice but to switch to a different IM network (which is often not easy given that everyone you speak to is probably only on a single network)
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Around here (Iowa), we (and by that i mean my generation -- i'm 18 years old) started out on MSN Messenger. This was in, i don't know, maybe grade five for us 'early adopters' and then six or seven for everybody else. MSN was the thing in my area for all of my friends to use. I don't know why exactly we all started using it (because i'm pretty sure back then MSN wasn't bundled with Windows yet), but we did.
One of my friends went off and found some on-line friends, probably computer-game buddies or something, and because of those friends he started using AIM. After that, he slowly started converting everybody else he (and the rest of us) knew to AIM, and after that everybody pretty much used both.
In secondary school, all of us nerdy types started using Trillian, which pretty much made specific protocols meaningless. Today, most of my friends (both on-line and off-line) have both, whether they use Trillian/Miranda/whatever or not. Probably 3/4 of the ones who don't have AIM only. The other fourth have MSN only.
Currently, MSN is becoming really really popular with the people i'm friends with for some reason, probably because of all the fancy doo-dads they're including now like themes and custom emoticons and big avatars (and i suppose the latter two are actually kind of neat, from a having-fun perspective).
I don't know if this is the norm for my area, but (to generalise) it seems like the more intelligent people are starting to flock to MSN. Whereas a few years ago your typical MSN screen name would be (8)(8)(8)(8)ju$+in CRAWLING IN MY SKIN THESE WOUNDS THEY WILL NOT HEAL FEAR IS HOW I FALL CONFUSING WHAT IS REAL sandy i luv u(8)(8)(8)(8), people are actually starting to be, you know, not retarded about it. e.g., they'll just use their name or their handle instead of putting an entire song in it. I don't know, maybe that's just a sign of increased maturity. It applies to younger kids (still in high school) that i know, too, though, so who knows.
ON THE OTHER HAND, the trendy girls and all the boys who try to hit on them, the kind of people i'd call 'preps', who listen exclusively to top-40 radio and wear Abercrombie and Fitch, stick with Yahoo!'s messenger. I don't really know why -- Y!IM is hideous and bloated, but OK. My little brothers and sisters use Y!IM, and they have, you know, 9084058940809345 different buddies and every single one of them has a screen name like the ridiculous one i described above, except of course it's Nelly lyrics or something. These are the kids who can't spell 'you'.
I suppose maybe one factor that contributed to the adoption of Y!IM by the middle-schoolers and freshmen in my area was the fact that Y!IM has a built-in radio thing, which means they can sit there and listen to 50 Cent while they're chatting about LOL SHUTUP SUK MY KOK GURL.
Just thought you'd be interested in hearing about the social break-down in relation to instant messengers in my area!
You know, you got modded as flamebait, and I'll probably get modded down for saying this, but I have to agree. What is with everyone and just blindly using a network controlled by a company you hate? I, at least, have morals. I wouldn't use AIM any more than I'd buy a bunch of Microsoft products. I use Debian GNU/Linux and Jabber. Ok, I'm an extremist. But don't you think that using AIM is just a *little* bit hypocritical? I guess I'll just accept my modding down from the grumpy AIM users who won't accept the truth about AIM's owners.
What is with this integration craze. Why does your IM client have to do video and voice chat? Do you use a separate email client? Web browser? Then why not have a separate video/voice chat client too?
I use Firefox for the web, Thunderbird for email, Psi for IM and Gnomemeeting for video/voice chat and don't see a problem.
Several universities utilize AIM for holding on-line office hours. In some cases it is professor preference, but in others there is a specified/required tool. Students who are not savvy computer users look for ease of use and AOL has the greater share of that market. If a student disappears from chat sessions that is one thing, but when this professor disappeared one week before finals it was not a happy time. Luckily us old Unix geeks wear a belt and suspenders and the odds of Yahoo and *Egads* MSN Messenger going down at the same time are minimal.
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It actually does make sense.
If you intended to read news and ended up deleting all your files, then you mistakenly removed all your files by mistake.
If you intended to delete all your files on another machine and ended deleting all the files on your computer (because you were in the wrong terminal), you would have you mistakenly removed all your files on purpose.
The "It's a mistake" video by "Men at work" provides another example of an accidental mistake. The commander tried to butt out his cigarette in an ash tray but ended up launching the bomb. The "99 red balloons" video by Nina provides an example of a purposeful mistake. The 99 red ballons were assumed to be missles, so the retaliatory launch was intential but the reasons for the launch were mistaken.
The difference is subtle, but it does exist.
Perhaps this is related to the recent layoffs at AOL?
Speak truth to power.
Yahoo also did this a while back, I had an existing account (kallahar) but at some point it stopped working. No errors, no warnings, just "invalid username". I couldn't even recreate it or add a new number at the end.
Turns out they ban any username with the word "allah" in it, which my name coincidentally has.