Aim stands for aol instant messenger. It was released by AOL in 1997 to aol subscribers but initially was only for its employees. It was originally released for Microsoft only but now is available for Mac as well as Microsoft. It was and to this day still is used mostly by teenagers. It is used to communicate by text over the internet in real time. Basically a "chat" one of the firsts of it kind. It was rivaled with yahoo, and messenger messenger as well. Aim was most likely chosen over the other two for a number of reasons. 1) Aim doesn't require to have or make an email address to have the messenger. It is only required to make a screen name without having to put all the information and time consuming as making an email would. 2) Aim allows more than 100 contacts to be added. 3) It takes away privacy information of the user that otherwise emails would allow. 4) It is easy to attain and has many features that msn and yahoo didn't have at the time.
Aim is efficient because it allows people to network with each other in real time, rather than face-book or myspace that is real time yet is leaving posts from time to time rather than on the spot communication. It is used by everyone from kids, teens to adults. Yet nowadays, it is mostly used by teens. From my experience, these types of communications have been labeled by age groups. For example, yahoo and msn is for adults, aim for youth, and skype for teens-adults. Just like myspace is for high school kids and facebook is for so called "college students and above".
Aim represents an easy way to communicate and stay touch with friends, do work, or just see what people are up to. It is very useful for almost any kind of office work. It is also great for working with someone else or another group of people. A feature called "direct connecting", allows 2 or more people to share documents with each other in the blink of an eye. I can send a class mate an entire power point presentation based on their internet connect in less than a minute. It now features such as group video chatting, status updates, and different sound alerts for different contacts.
When talking about privacy compared to the other chat systems, aim is probably the most private. For example, msn, yahoo, skype, all requires the user's information that is easily accessible to whoever is chatting with the user. For aim, you don't have to say anything that has to do with you unless you want to put it in your info. Also, unless you direct connect with someone that is strictly under your jurisdiction, no one can access the files in your computer.
If you want privacy and easy chatting ability, aim is probably your safest bet.
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