Online service provider company, AOL has recently announced that the company is putting end to its pioneering Instant Messenger chat platform after 20 years of valuable service. According to an article posted on AOL’s official website stated that “AOL’s Instant Messenger will be discontinued on December 15.” In a blog post, a spokesman for AOL’s parent company explained the reason for shutting down by mentioning that the casualty of the evolving way people communicate.

Michael Albers, vice president of communications at Oath wrote that “AIM tapped into new digital technologies and ignited a cultural shift, but the way in which we communicate with each other has profoundly changed,”

The application will still function until December 15. After that date, users won’t be able to sign in and all data will be deleted, automatically but only people and users with an aim.com email address can access it.

The application was launched in 1997, AOL Instant Messenger was at the forefront of what was called at the time the biggest trend in online communication since email. The platform has provided instant access to friends and contacts on a user’s “buddy list,” was wildly popular for the first few years after its launch and there are users who prefer to choose AOL above all other Instant Messengers. It got more than 100 million registered users till 2001.

Instant Messaging application was very protective of its dominance in the instant messaging market to secure the data of its users. It fended off rivals, like Microsoft by blocking their messaging platforms from communicating with AOL users. Its popularity as a communication tool waned amid the rise of text messaging, Google Chat and social networking sites. The company was also known for its data speed and resolve issues within a short span of time by contacting service care.

In his recent post about the AOL, Albers noted the strong affinity many feels for the messaging platform and its place in the evolution of communication. he stated that “In the late 1990s, the world had never seen anything like it,”