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It was announced back in March that AOL would no longer be updating Instant Messenger. When we heard wave of this, not only were we smacked with nostalgia, (anyone remember staying up til 1am chatting with that new guy or gal you started talking to your senior year of high school? Or AIM Express – when you were away from your computer and had to chat on the go? In bright pink Comic Sans font?), we began to think of technologies we grew up with that are obsolete. AIM is just the latest casualty on a long list of “has-beens” on the Internet.

Here’s a list:

1. AOL Keyword Search. Before Google, before Bing, before even Dogpile or Ask Jeeves, there was the AOL Keyword. Sure, some of our moms still use it, but can you believe there was actually a time where that was used in lieu of Wikipedia for final papers? (Final papers for a tech-savvy 5th grader, anyway.)

2. Dial-Up Internet. Oh, it’s always a real treat visiting my grandparents, because they still have this. And you have to connect through AOL! I wonder if they still pay the $24.99 per month for it. I should probably intervene. Anyway, now, we use the Internet to make phone calls! Talk about a role-reversal. With VoIP technology, FaceTime, Skype, and the like, it’s kind of funny to think that we could only connect through a phone before.

3. Floppy Disks. They weren’t even floppy! Somehow, though, they have persevered, like the cockroach of technology, and still exist as the “Save As” icon in most word processing programs.

4. LiveJournal. The original social network! I still have mine, and sometimes read through it. I laugh and cry at myself. But this was a way that I connected with a lot of people in college. Back when literally every thought was the most important thought (in more than 140 characters, at that), we all left comments, had different pictures, moods, etc. It was the pre-Facebook wall.

5. MySpace. Let’s just take a minute and mourn all of Tom’s losses.

6. Nokia Phones. They may still be the best-selling phones elsewhere, but in the good old US of A, iPhone is king now. I sometimes take my old brick of a phone out (yes, I still have it), and admire its shiny light blue case, fancy Swarovski crystal screen border, and light-up antennae that I got at the mall. And let’s not forget how awesome Snake was! The OG of apps!

7. WinAmp. This year actually marks the 15th anniversary of this music application. Back in the day, it was a must-have piece of software! RealPlayer and Windows Media Player were the only other options and they were lame, right? They had no custom skins, no visualizations, no nothing! Unfortunately, iTunes has killed it. 

8. Napster. Oh, Sean Parker. His way was the only way I ever got new music in middle and high school. This was before Torrents, before LimeWire, before Grooveshark, before Spotify and Pandora. Napster came onto the scene right when burning CDs was the cool thing to do. Even CDs are becoming relics now, and somehow vinyl has made a huge comeback. Thanks, hipsters.

9. The Oregon Trail. No longer will young Billy or Susie learn life lessons about rationing or fording rivers, because this game is unfortunately obsolete. While there are many modern-day revivals, like Gregory Sherl’s book of poetry about the Oregon Trail, and an iPhone app, nothing will beat the original 8-bit goodness or anxiety of your oxen drowning or dying of Dysentery on your way to freedom.

Honorable Mention: Google +. DOA.

Have any other gems that we missed? Let’s reminisce together. Leave them in the comments!