AOL Shutting Down AIM Unless You Forward This Article To Five Friends

mattgrimm
I just received a shocking IM from a high-level executive telling me that AOL plans to shut down its highly popular instant messenging service unless you forward this article to five of your friends.

Here's the IM in full:

AOLExeutiveOFFICIAL: Sorry to break the news to you, but AIM and AOL are asking you to send this messageTo at least 20 people becasue AIM is getting very Crowded And we want to see who is useing there Screen Name And who is Not. You Have 3 days to Do this. If In the 3 days this is not sent to anyone from your screen name your account will be deleted ! Sorry again

Dear AIM users,

Because of our overloading of our servers, we are being forced to extract our non-active AIM users. Because this is a free service, AOL has exceeded the budget for the AIM service. We are asking that you send this exact message to 20 other AIM users to ensure us that you're an active AIM user. Our system tracking devise will pick up this message to keep you on user. Our system tracking devise will pick up this message to keep you on our active list. You have 72 hours to complete this task or your service will be cancelled immediately. Starting April 9, 2003, we will be charging a small fee for registering of a screen name for AIM. Thank you for your time and for using AOL or AIM.

Sincerely
Mark Jenkins
AOL Time Warner