Barry Appelman

Barry Appelman is recognized as being the father of the buddy list and AOL Instant Messager. Companies had been using crude forms of Instant Messaging within their own networks for over forty years, but the idea of presence i.e. who is logged on at any given time was non existent. It was not until Appelman and his colleagues at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center first began to write programs on the mainframe system letting each other know when they were actually online that modern day Instant Messaging was born.

In 1994 while employed at AOL, Appelman hired a single contract programmer, Stephen D. Williams, and for five months they worked together building a prototype system that allowed AOL subscribers to have an early form of the buddy list.

In 1995 AIM was launched internally to AOL employees. It was initially dubbed "the stalker feature" since many employees were uncomfortable having their co-workers know when they were online. AOL decided to make Appelman's system available to its subscribers in May 1997. Ten years later, there were over 53 million AIM users worldwide.

Quotes

1. “There is some need [Instant Messaging] fulfills. Once you start using it, it’s hard to live without it”

2. "You don’t really want to see someone online and then find out they’re not [really] online,”

3. "the germ of the idea [for the Buddy List] came from the chat-room list,"

References

1.http://www.crn.com/it-channel/50500291

2.http://home.uchicago.edu/~rposner/wallst2.htm

3.http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=1345955&capId=24689&previousCapId=91996&previousTitle=Index%20Ventures