Away Messages: How AIM Taught a Generation to Chat
Buddy lists, door sounds and song lyrics in your away message. AOL Instant Messenger ran from 1997 to 2017.
By the InterStalgia history desk · November 14, 2026
Before texting was cheap and before social media, there was a little yellow running man. AOL Instant Messenger launched in May 1997, and by the late 1990s it was how a lot of teenagers and college students kept in touch.
The buddy list
AIM was built around the buddy list: the people you talked to, sorted into groups, with their names lighting up when they came online. Unlike some rivals, AIM didn't need anyone's approval to add them to your list. You just needed their screen name. Getting someone's screen name became its own small social event.
The running man mascot was designed by JoRoan Lazaro and was there from the first release in 1997.
Away messages
The feature people remember most is the away message. When you stepped away from the computer, you could leave a note for anyone who messaged you. People quickly turned it into something else: a status update before status updates existed. Teens and college students changed their away messages several times a day, or left one up all night with the computer on, to tell friends where they were, what they were doing, which party they were at or what they were thinking about. Song lyrics were a popular choice.
In other words, AIM users were posting short updates about their lives for their friends to read, years before Facebook and Twitter made that the core of the internet.
Signing off
AIM's popularity faded through the 2000s and 2010s. Fewer people used AOL, and Google Talk, text messaging and social networks like Facebook took over. AOL shut AIM down on December 15, 2017, after 20 years.
A lot of people still remember their first screen name, whether they want to or not.