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You no longer have mail: America Online, keyword RIP

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by maumann, May 3, 2021.

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  1. Mngwa

    Mngwa Well-Known Member

    Loved the aol chat rooms


    My hubby's main email address is still aol
     
    garrow and Neutral Corner like this.
  2. TigerVols

    TigerVols Well-Known Member

    You're not alone...just last week I sent emails to 504,000 customers with AOL addresses.
     
  3. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    I also have an AOL email address. Got it in college in the 90s and just never saw the need for a new one.
    Hell, I think I kept my dial-up service with them until about 2010, until the world (and our company's computers) finally went full wireless. I kept it on hand as an emergency backup just in case I couldn't get a Wi-Fi signal out on the road somewhere, or our company's primitive server connection wouldn't work (a not uncommon occurrence with early 2000s technology). In a worst-case scenario I figured I could always log in to AOL and send an email.

    So what will happen with .aol email addresses now? After 25 years, I have so many different website accounts attached to that address -- including some very important ones tied to monthly bills and such -- that it's going to be a giant pain in the ass if I have to change them all and set up a new email address.
     
  4. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    AOL addresses still work; I believe the domain name was sold off some time ago.
     
    Batman likes this.
  5. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

    My aunt, who's gotta be in her 70s, has a AOL account.
     
  6. Sam Mills 51

    Sam Mills 51 Well-Known Member

    It's gone?

    A-O-hell-no!
     
  7. maumann

    maumann Well-Known Member

    AOL Instant Messenger was the primary way for us to communicate before Blackberries and smart phones. It was sort of the CB radio of the early Internet, because AOL wouldn't allow most people to use their actual names -- I remember "(your name) is not available. We suggest afskdfhahgj57."

    So if you had a significantly large IM contact list, sometimes you'd have to do a double-take when "roseylady241" would ping you, and you'd have to determine if that was a real person and how you knew them.

    At least at Total Sports, we all tried to create IMs with "ts" somewhere in the name. I still use "maumannts" for the log-ins for some sites. And even though the news content group sat around a large round table, we rarely spoke out loud, instead preferring to use AIM to communicate. It was always humorous to see somebody suddenly laugh out loud at an AIM joke in an otherwise quiet office.
     
    sgreenwell likes this.
  8. Songbird

    Songbird Well-Known Member

    I can't remember my Excite password and they can't/won't help get it. Excite was my first email address along with CompuServe.
     
  9. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    Started with hotmail in, like, 1998. Switched to yahoo in 2007 for its messenger chat. Yahoo's been the main email address ever since. I have a gmail but never use it; reminds me too much of the horseshit company email (email is fine; company is horseshit).
     
  10. Roscablo

    Roscablo Well-Known Member

    Hotmail is still my main personal email address (also the age where it was my first outside my college account) and I'm not afraid to admit it! With the outlook platform it is just as good as any other, honestly. I have an email address in probably every other main system, including gmail, because honestly, you need Google for almost everything, but I always hated all the people who changed their email address every four weeks when something better came along. I still can't figure out what my sister's main email is. Not even kidding, she has so freaking many that she's used as her main account.

    So I never wanted to do that to people. Nice of me I guess. It's not really an issue any more since email isn't quite the communication thing any more, although still pretty necessary, and most people seem to have migrated to Google.

    I do lots of email communication for non-professional stuff -- kids school, volunteer committees, activities, whatever -- and you'd be surprised how many hotmails and yahoos and even AOLs there still are in wide use. I never did have an AOL account. I don't think.
     
  11. wicked

    wicked Well-Known Member

    For a couple years, I hung out there instead of, like, with real people. It's a dark period in my life.
     
  12. Mngwa

    Mngwa Well-Known Member

    Not sure what rooms you were in, but the one I frequented was Star Trek and I absolutely loved it. I was single and covering college sports, so working weird hours and it was nice to be able to get home at whatever time in the night and be able to pop into the chat room and talk to people until I could unwind and go to sleep.
     
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