Anyone who has been around computers for any length of time has or has had an AIM instant messaging account. In fact, it's still our primary IM provider here at PCMag. But the official AOL client, which is also accessible from other services like Digsby and Trillian, had gotten bogged down with "feature creep," making for a complicated interface that offers no end of social, music, and video capabilities. Until now.
PCMag talked with the man behind the revamp, AOL's Jason Shellen, in advance of today's release. Shellen's company, Thing Labs, was purchased by AOL specifically to pump new blood into AIM.
"AOL told us they'd love some startup-minded folks to give AIM a refresh," said Shellen. "AIM had been bringing people the OMG and LOL, and TMI for years and years, but the product kept getting patchwork updates and the feature set grew and grew. We thought we should give a trim, slim update to the AIM client and make great group conversation. There are some cool whiz-bang features too."
AIM has a new cursive brand logo, and the buddy list now looks totally different. It's larger, and conversations appear to the side of the contact list, rather than in separate small windows. Conversations look something like the speech bubbles used on the iPhone for text messaging. If a contact sends a link to a video or image in your chat, it can play right in the AIM software. In addition to entries for individual contacts, you can create permanent group entries, which let you send a message to everyone in the group at any time. You can also find and join public chat groups.
"Adding members to a group chat is just as easy as selecting from your friend list," said Shellen. "You can imagine that this is quite a lot of fun, not just on the desktop, especially with images being shown inline, videos being shown inline. It's incredibly social and fun. It's the private place to share what you've always wanted. But it becomes even more fun if you're on your iPhone or Android phone."
The AIM client also incorporates news feeds from AOL properties like Huffington Post, TechCrunch, and Engadget. Your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram social notifications can also appear in the AIM client.
The new AIM, like Windows Live Messenger, now supports offline messages, too, meaning that if someone IMs you while you're not online, you'll see the message on whatever device you next access AIM. File sharing is improved, too, replacing earlier AIM's direct connect capability, and uploaded images are now displayed in the buddy list. Status updates now have a Twitter-like "follow" and "follower" model. You can mute groups, and sound preferences have been reduced to the minimum: just one—on or off.
The Web version of AIM has also been revamped. Shellen says it now looks more like a true Web app, or a full Web version of the installed software. Both will launch at preview.aim.com starting today. Versions for Windows, Mac, Android, and iPhone (pending Apple approval) will be available.
For more from Michael, follow him on Twitter @mikemuch.