{"id":968,"date":"2026-05-04T15:22:38","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T19:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog2wrkdev.wpenginepowered.com\/history-chat-apps\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T06:35:51","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T10:35:51","slug":"history-chat-apps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog2workato.wpengine.com\/history-chat-apps\/","title":{"rendered":"The History of Chat Apps: AIM, Slack, and Everything Between"},"content":{"rendered":"\nIn 2016, over 2.5 billion people used at least one messaging app. That\u2019s one-third of the world\u2019s entire population, with users ranging from your grandmother to your younger brother.\n\nToday, it\u2019s commonplace for offices to use a messaging app for internal communication in order to coordinate meetings, share pitch decks, and plan happy hours. And with the latest bot technology, chat apps are becoming a hub for employees to do work in their apps without leaving the chat console.\n\nFor many people, chat apps are a given part of their workday. But how did they become so popular?\n<h2><strong>Instant Messaging: Child of the 90\u2019s<\/strong><\/h2>\nChat apps (and their siblings, chat rooms) may bring to mind images of the 1990s, with their dial-up internet and classic sitcoms, but commercial chat apps date back to the 1980s.\n\nCompuServe released CB Simulator in 1980, and 1985 brought the launch of Commodore\u2019s Quantum Link (also known as Q-Link). An online service, it allowed multi-user chat, email, file sharing, and games.\n\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-4197 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.workato.com\/the-connector\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/80s-commerical.png\" alt=\"Commercial chat apps in the 80s\" width=\"512\" height=\"512\" \/>\n\nIf Q-Link sounds familiar, that\u2019s because it is: in 1991, the company changed its name to America Online (AOL). But AOL wouldn\u2019t launch its signature product, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), until 1997.\n\nIn the meantime, the Vodafone GSM network enabled the first SMS in 1992. And in 1996, ICQ launched as the first widely adopted instant messaging platform.\n\nThe late 1990s brought dramatic changes in the chat app market.\n\nBoth Yahoo! and MSN launched their own instant messengers (in 1998 and 1999, respectively), and AOL bought out competitor ICQ\u2019s parent company, Mirabilis, for $287 million upfront, with an additional $120 million paid out later. That\u2019s about $612.7 million today!\n\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-4198 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.workato.com\/the-connector\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/90s-commercial.png\" alt=\"Commercial chat apps in the 90s\" width=\"512\" height=\"512\" \/>\n\nAs AIM pioneered chatbots, like SmarterChild, it also increased its market share. Its rivalry with MSN Messenger began almost as soon as the competitor launched in 1999.\n\nBy 2006, AIM controlled 52% of the IM market. Its dominance, however, was short-lived. Struggling to monetize and facing increasing competition from new apps like Skype and Google Talk, AIM fell out of favor, eventually eliminating its entire development team in 2012.\n\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-4199 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.workato.com\/the-connector\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/10s-commercial.png\" alt=\"Commerical chat apps from 2010 to 2020\" width=\"512\" height=\"512\" \/>\n\nWith the inception of smartphones, chat apps continued to thrive; in 2013, chat apps finally surpassed SMS in message volume. By 2015, WhatsApp alone hosted 30 billion messages per day; SMS logged only 20 billion. And in the summer of 2016, Facebook Messenger hit one billion users.\n\n<a href=\"https:\/\/ctt.ec\/_kvFh\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-4266\" src=\"https:\/\/www.workato.com\/the-connector\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/chat-2.png\" alt=\"By 2006, AIM controlled 52% of the IM market\" width=\"557\" height=\"467\" \/><\/a>\n<h2><strong>The Slow Growth of Enterprise Chat Apps<\/strong><\/h2>\nDespite developing around the same time, the history of enterprise chat apps is markedly different than the story of their consumer-facing counterparts. The very first enterprise chat apps don\u2019t enjoy the same place in our collective memory as AIM and ICQ.\n\nEarly contender Yammer launched in 2008; Microsoft acquired the platform in 2012. Clearspace began in 2006, rebranding several times until its rebirth as Jive six years later. Other enterprise chat programs, usually integrated with other social features like blogs and wikis, blipped in and out of existence.\n\nNone of this initial crop of enterprise apps proved a runaway success, and many theories exist as to why later programs have overshadowed them.\n\nOne thing\u2019s for certain: these programs predated the rise of smartphones, and mobility certainly fomented the creation of second-generation commercial apps like WhatsApp and Snapchat.\n<h2><strong>Enterprise Chat: The Next Generation<\/strong><\/h2>\nAs the first decade of the new millennium closed, an enterprise chat app renaissance slowly began.\n\nThough email had been widely used for the previous twenty years, companies soon began looking for a better way to communicate quickly; email-based workflows are slower and do not allow for many business functions that are now critical to work, like screen-sharing or video calls.\n\nSome one-to-one chat applications existed, like GChat and Outlook Messenger, but group messaging applications had yet to take off.\n\nIn January 2010, three graduates of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute\u2014Chris Rivers, Garret Heaton, and Pete Curley\u2014launched <a href=\"https:\/\/www.workato.com\/integrations\/hipchat?utm_source=blog\">Hipchat<\/a>, a web-based chat and instant messaging service.\n\nShortly thereafter, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Atlassian\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Atlassian<\/a> acquired it in March 2012. Its premium version addressed several enterprise concerns by adding screensharing, history retention controls, and the ability to run within corporate firewalls.\n\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-4200\" src=\"https:\/\/www.workato.com\/the-connector\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/10s-enterprise-e1496158319526.png\" alt=\"Enterprise chat apps from 2010 to 2020\" width=\"582\" height=\"457\" \/>\n\nIn August 2013, the enterprise chat space exploded. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.workato.com\/integrations\/slack?utm_source=blog\">Slack<\/a>, which stands for &#8220;Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge,\u201d grew out of an internal tool used during the development of <i>Glitch<\/i>, a defunct online game.\n\nThough not the first (or even the most revolutionary) office chat app, Slack\u2019s growth\u2014it now has four million users\u2014has dwarfed most other programs. A mere 1.25 years after launching, it reached a valuation of $1 billion. By April 2015, Slack was worth almost three times that.\n\n<a href=\"https:\/\/ctt.ec\/bjIr3\" data-wp-editing=\"1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-4262 \" src=\"https:\/\/www.workato.com\/the-connector\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/chat-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"546\" height=\"458\" \/><\/a>\n\nSlack\u2013with its channels, DMs, and private groups\u2013is reminiscent of IRC, which might help explain its popularity.\n\nA glut of similar apps has since incorporated these features. 2015 saw the launch of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.workato.com\/integrations\/cisco_spark?utm_source=blog\">Cisco Spark<\/a>, which has since evolved into an entire ecosystem of SDKs, APIs, and a developer site.\n\nMicrosoft designed <a href=\"https:\/\/get.workato.com\/workbot-teams\/?utm_source=blog\">MS Teams<\/a> to compete directly with Slack; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.workato.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/microsoft-teams-workbot\/#.WR3rHYkrKRs\">it launched in early 2017<\/a> as an integrated component of Office 365.\n\nAs businesses prioritize digital transformation, enterprise chat apps continue to enjoy overwhelming popularity. What\u2019s to come? Chatbots, machine learning, and increased integration are all popular with both enterprise and commercial users, who discover new ways to chat every day.\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Click to view the full infographic<\/em><\/p>\n\n<h3><em><b>Want more content like this?\u00a0\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog2workato.wpengine.com\/subscribe\/\">Subscribe to our blog below!<\/a><\/b><\/em><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2016, over 2.5 billion people used at least one messaging app. That\u2019s one-third of the world\u2019s entire population, with users ranging from your grandmother to your younger brother. Today, it\u2019s commonplace for offices to use a messaging app for internal communication in order to coordinate meetings, share pitch decks, and plan happy hours. And [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":11787,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-automation-integration"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The History of Chat Apps: AIM, Slack, and Everything Between - Workato<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Explore the evolution of chat apps, from AIM and ICQ to Slack and Microsoft Teams, and how enterprise messaging transformed work.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog2workato.wpengine.com\/history-chat-apps\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The History of Chat Apps: AIM, Slack, and Everything Between - 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