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Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

358 points ofalkaed | 2 comments | 11 Oct 25 22:16 UTC | HN request time: 0.488s | source

Just curious and who knows, maybe someone will adopt it or develop something new based on its ideas.
1. silisili ◴[12 Oct 25 08:02 UTC] No.45556268[source]▶
I've argued this for years on this site...but AOL.

At its best, having IM, email, browser, games, keywords, chats, etc. was a beautiful idea IMO. That they were an ISP seemed secondary or even unrelated to the idea. But they chose to charge for access even in the age of broadband, and adopt gym level subscription tactics to boot, and people decided they'd rather not pay it which is to be expected. I often wonder if they'd have survived as a software company otherwise.

They were basically a better thought out Facebook before Facebook, in my opinion.

replies(1): >>45556363 #
2. spike021 ◴[12 Oct 25 08:17 UTC] No.45556363[source]▶
I miss AIM, and that type of messenger in general, a lot.

You could purposely choose to be online or offline.

Much easier to draw a line back then about how often you were online.