Ready..AIM….Fight! Or It’s Not Who You Know, It’s Who Has You In Their Buddy List   7/22/2005 - 2,627 views, 3 Comments

What the heck is “AIM Fight?”, Aunty can already hear her readers scratching their collective heads.

Well, you know all of those 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon friend-of-a-friend sites which have become so popular (or reviled, depending on where you stand) over the years? Like Linked-In, Grokster, and Friendster? (Need I go on?)

Well, it turns out that the best metric of your linked-in-ness, your popularity, your cool, is none of those artificially created networks, but the one which has been right under our noses for the past several years: the AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) network.

The concept behind AIM Fight, which was created by, according to AOL’s AIM Fight site, “two AIM programmers with a little bit too much free time on their hands”, is simple: the more people who list you in their buddy list, the higher your score. It’s the old “it’s not who you know, it’s who knows you”.

“Your score is the sum of the current number of people online who have you listed as a buddy, out to three degrees. This means the score is constantly changing, and the winner of the battle will constantly change with it,” explains the site.

The “Fight” part comes because on the site they have rigged a competition arena (ok, web page) where you can enter your own AIM i.d., and that of someone else, and see which of the two of you have the best “score” (number of people who link to you, or link to someone who links to you, out to the three degrees).

Aunty was rather proud of her 6206, until she looked up the numbers on a colleague who is a reporter for the New York Times, and they have a score of 42819.

Wow.

Once you figure out your AIM Fight score, come back and tell us what it is in our AIM Fight Score Survey

AIM Fight can be found, and played, at AIMFight.com