A decades-long archive of AOL Instant Messenger Buddy Icons and Away Messages has been recovered and made available to the public. A free web app lets you re-create your nostalgic AIM experience with over 50,000 icons and 3,500 away messages.
YORK, PA, August 05, 2025 /24-7PressRelease/ — To commemorate 25 years of social media, the creators of now extinct OriginalIcons and AimAwayMessages have resurrected their full collection of 2000s nostalgia back to life. A total of 57,423 Buddy Icons and 3,660 Away Messages have been recovered from backup drives, ready for everyone to explore once again. Through their free web app at www.myoldicons.com people can create a window into their past and share a widget decorated with their favorite Buddy Icons, Away Messages and old Screen Names.
25 years ago, AOL introduced Buddy Icons to their instant messaging service. In November 2000, John Beatty created the website AimIcons.net, the internet’s first curated collection of tiny images to help people personalize their private messages. This website eventually became OriginalIcons.com, attracting millions of visitors looking to grab fresh new icons and contribute their own images to the collection.
By 2003, OriginalIcons.com had become the most visited website by teenagers in the world. The collection of icons grew, as did the number of creative contributors fueling the Buddy Icon craze. A large network of websites grew and supported each other with crosslinks offering collections of other pop culture internet media of the day. This was how the “Web” in Worldwide Web was intended to work.
Buddy Icons and Away Messages were how an entire generation shared their interests, personalities, and moods. The internet landscape and social media have evolved dramatically over the past couple of decades. Platform popularity shifted from AOL to MySpace, Facebook, Reddit, Snapchat, Instagram, and Discord. For some, there will always be a fondness for the memory of that short list of friends on AIM and the quirky Away Messages they’d leave behind when they popped in for a chat.
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