Back when I was a kid, AIM was the premier messaging service. Anyone who was anyone had at least 2 screen names, both involving horrible mispellings, puns, and arbitrary numbers. Back in the days when having someone’s screen name (legitimately from them, not just a mutual friend) was more important than having their number. Since then, the advent of social networking has severely changed the instant message landscape and the cyber landscape at large, leaving AIM more or less in the dust. But now, AIM is trying to rise back to relevance with a new redesign, and from what I can tell from its preview features, it looks like it might actually have a fighting chance.

Yesterday, a group of nine of the biggest online companies took out a full page ad in the New York Times to voice their concern over two pieces of legislation in congress that could greatly affect the way America uses the Internet. In the letter, Google, Facebook, Mozilla, Zynga, eBay, Twitter, Yahoo, LinkedIn, and AOL ask that their point of view be heard regarding the Protect IP and the Stop Online Piracy Act.

I kid you not: AOL still has 3.5 million loyal dial-up subscribers as of this very moment. Just take a minute to think about all the words in that sentence that are insane, specifically all of them. Dial-up was pretty awful even before there were alternatives, and AOL was pretty awful even in the world of dial-up providers. The fact that AOL has somehow managed to hang on to that many faithful dial-up devotees amazes me.

Granted, AOL still has an overall declining user base. They lost 630,000 subscribers over the past year, but that’s actually their lowest Q3 loss because, I can’t believe I’m saying this, recent promotions have actually brought 200,000 new subscribers to AOL, in 2011. Really though.

When done right, nothing is more instantly recognizable and associable as a catchy sound bite. Once upon a time, instantly recognizable jingles were the backbone of the advertising industry. Today,  audio clips are a little more pervasive, considering our seeming dependence on electronic devices. Receive a phone call? Catchy audio clip. Get an email? Catchy sound bite. Turn on just about any modern electronic device? Memorable tune. We’re living in a world where companies and devices need to differentiate themselves from the competition as much as possible, and an instantly recognizable sound bite is a three-to-ten second mean to that end. So, come with us as we check out some of the most instantly recognizable, brand differentiating, nostalgia inducing sound bites in tech.

Last night, executives from AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo! announced a plan to team up and cooperate on ad sales in order to try and maintain some level of competition with Google. The plan involves all three companies selling ad inventory on each others’ sites in hopes of allowing them to collectively regain some of the ad spending that has been going to ad networks.

The three plan to share revenue on the ads and calculate that the profit gained through that approach will be greater than the slim pickings they would get by all individually going to ad networks. While the pact encourages a certain level of cooperation, it’s an open relationship; no pact member is prohibited from breaking down and working with the very ad networks they are teaming up against or even from going to Google itself. The hope is that the mutual benefit of the situation will prevent that kind of behavior organically. We’ll see if it actually works.

(via AllThingsD)

AOL Instant Messenger may no longer be the buzzworthy social media product it once was, but just about everyone over 18 has an account nevertheless. For those people with lengthy AIM contact lists or who work in offices where AIM is still the lingua franca for team communication, but who still use Gmail regularly, AOL and Google have made your life a little easier.

Following a rollout taking place over the course of the next few days, Gmail users will be able to communicate with people on AIM without separately logging into an AIM account, and vice versa. To add an AIM buddy to one’s Gmail contact list, simply enter their email address as username@aol.com. AOL has also made available a bulk importer for bringing AIM contacts into Gmail en masse.

(AIM via Google OS)

Dear AOL,

Congrats on your recent acquisition of TechCrunch- there’s no better team reporting on tech these days. They’ve really come into their own over the last couple of years and are producing high-quality articles and videos at scale and driving conversations forward that are important to all of us. I think you’re going to make a fortune selling ads against their content. Well done.

Now that I have you all buttered up, I have a request. Within that tapestry of websites you bought is woven a gem in our little corner of the world. It’s our very own anthropologic artifact that we’ve been co-creating with Mike and his team over the years. Within its hyperlinked catacombs lie hieroglyphs of startups as they rise, as they fall, as they exit into immortality and as they submerge quietly into the dead pool. It’s an invaluable daily resource for many of us.

Which is why I’m writing. CrunchBase is not much of a traffic driver within the TechCrunch network of sites, and it’s starting to show. Look, I know it’s only been a few months since the acquisition closed, but CrunchBase is already getting sad. Page load speeds are borderline unbearable, traffic seems to be sliding and content is becoming stale. As someone who has contributed data to CrunchBase and as a near-daily user of the service, I want to make sure this gem gets the attention it deserves.

Editor-in-chief Josh Topolsky and Managing Editor Nilay Patel have left Endgaget, one of the biggest tech news blogs on Internet. Both Topolsky and Patel don’t give any indication that their leaving has to do with AOL’s acquisition of the Huffington Post and decision to leave Arianna Huffington in charge of of Engadget, which many felt may somewhat tarnish the quality oft he site. However, there will no doubt be speculation that the pair left Engadget due to–at least in part–AOL, as Paul Miller recently left Engadget as well, putting the blame squarely on AOL, claiming their “way” doesn’t promote good journalism or “even good entertainment.” Topolsky and Patel mention that they aren’t leaving the Internet, however, and have some projects in mind, so fans of the editors won’t have to worry that their favorite tech bloggers will be disappearing altogether.

(via All Things Digital)

The Huffington Post is soon to be under new management, as will most of the news sites under AOL‘s purview, including Engadget, TechCrunch, and more: In a Super Bowl eve shocker, HuffPo and AOL jointly announced that AOL will be acquiring the Huffington Post for $315 million cash some time in the first or second quarter of 2011. Arianna Huffington, who has led the mega-aggregator site as it has ballooned to reach an audience of more than 25 million visitors per month, will become the editor-in-chief of a new thing called the Huffington Post Media Network, which will encompass “all Huffington Post and AOL content, including Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest, Black Voices, PopEater, AOL Music, AOL Latino, AutoBlog, Patch, StyleList, and more.”

That’s right: MapQuest is about to become super liberal.

Get ready to haz a sad: Ken Auletta of The New Yorker revealed in an article profiling AOL that the company makes 60 percent of its profits through people, mostly elderly people, who believe they need to pay for a monthly subscription to go online and check their email. Is this a scam, or just a case of witholding information — or in this case, lying?