My wife chatted with me on facebook yesterday... It was an exhilarating experience. Later I revisited the chat once again when my sister Lydia sent me a message. I took me back. Back to the early days of what we know as the world wide web. I remember sitting in the computer lab with my best friend Jeremy, who showed me a chat room for the first time. We each made profiles for the chat room, I used from the NBC Friends website Ross' picture for my profile, and he used Chandler's... it was awesome! 
The "hot girls" (according to their bogus pics) all thought we were the real deal! Then, when I graduated in 99, I bought my own computer. It was then that AIM began to gain popularity like crazy, for which I give much credit to the '99 graduating class. I would guess half of them failed their freshman year, because they spent it typing frantically in this new txt shorthand. This is really a full circle moment for me, because at that time, Erin and I were in a long distance relationship. Because unlimited cell phone plans were not at all what we see today, we used up phone cards like mad. But she would never IM me for more than a few sentences. For some reason she didn't like saving all that money. Now she is one initiating contact... nice.
The "hot girls" (according to their bogus pics) all thought we were the real deal! Then, when I graduated in 99, I bought my own computer. It was then that AIM began to gain popularity like crazy, for which I give much credit to the '99 graduating class. I would guess half of them failed their freshman year, because they spent it typing frantically in this new txt shorthand. This is really a full circle moment for me, because at that time, Erin and I were in a long distance relationship. Because unlimited cell phone plans were not at all what we see today, we used up phone cards like mad. But she would never IM me for more than a few sentences. For some reason she didn't like saving all that money. Now she is one initiating contact... nice.
I didn't even know about the new facebook chat until one day 15 people started talking to me at once. That was hard to keep up with.
I felt the same sense of nostalgia when I found out gmail had chat a few months ago. Who can forget the AIM glory days when lol, brb, ttyl, and :D were standard vocabulary and the disappointment of seeing that the girl you wanted to IM had an away message up.