It's worth noting that AIM did make several attempts to integrate social media features, admittedly a bit late (the same year Facebook launched Chat).
Re:The Last Message Sent on AIM
by thesuitonym on Monday March 01, 2021 @09:34AM
(#26303101)
I believe AIM tried this more than once, and every time it was laughed out of the room. Nobody wanted it.
Facebook didn't have chat functionnalities until four years after it's started. AOL might have been able to enter the social network market at the time but the link with instant messaging was far from obvious then.
Facebook chat seems to have been created in 2008, but I'm pretty sure AIM had chatrooms when I was in highschool, which would put it at pre-2006. Not exactly the same thing, but the foundation was already there - AIM already had user-made profiles as well.
Yea I used AOL chatrooms and then AIM chatrooms in the late 1990's into the 2000's. I liked that AIM allowed you to connect with strangers who may have had similar interests but were outside your network (unlike Facebook). A few people I met on AOL/AIM have become good friends IRL, and my cousin and a couple others I know met their future spouses on AIM.
Of course, it's easy to say this today having seen the result. But aol in particular was familiar with ad-driven business; they should have had the appropriate resources to anticipate the potential of their businesses.