AIM Screen Name

I never used AIM in my internet history path since I started surfing in 1995 and I always had the feeling that AIM was mainly used by people living in the US, while at that time ICQ was “the next big thing”.

When I was introduced to ICQ by a friend, his ID number was a 7 digits starting with 5 and I got mine which was also a 7 digits but starting with 9, and I used sometimes to feel proud that I am an ICQ user with a 7 digits ID, while most of friends I introduced to ICQ where in the 8 digits field, at that time, ICQ was not really carrying about the screen name or ID of its users, so the system allocated random numbers as your ID.

Then lately I wanted to have an AIM account, so i went to discover this online messenger and got surprised that your screen name can not be more than 16 characters. And it really reminded me of those email early days when your email address could not be more than 8 characters, also it reminded me when you were not able to put a dot in your hotmail email address, while you were able to use an underscore.

I have the same username or screen name on Skype, Yahoo, Hotmail & Gmail which is [myfirstname.mylastname] a total of 18 characters including the dot while I had no chance to have the same for my AIM because it is limited to 16 characters and it really made me wonder what are the reasons behind this limitation.

While all the other players are flexible with your username choice, I still wonder how can AIM limit itself in the WEB 2.0 age!