AOL suffers instant messaging outage

By Mike Tarsala, CBS.MarketWatch.com Last Update: 1:31 PM ET Oct 6, 2000 NewsWatch Latest headlines

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- America Online confirmed Friday its Instant Messenger service broke down, affecting an unknown number of its 66 million subscribers.

Today on CBS MarketWatch Nasdaq, Dow slammed over earnings worries, jobs data Bond Report: Treasurys stay lower after strong jobs report Razorfish sliced after warning Crude prices, oil shares edge higher Due Diligence: Dominance not enough for Univision More top stories... CBS MarketWatch Columns Updated: 10/6/2000 1:11:04 PM ET The outage, which took place at about 10:30 a.m. EDT, did not affect Internet service for America Online's (AOL: news, msgs) 24 million subscribers. The company couldn't immediately quantify how many subscribers were shut off to the company's popular IM service. A spokesman said it was "a very small number."

AOL's instant messaging software, introduced in 1989, allows subscribers to AOL's Internet access service, as well as visitors to its Web page, to e-mail each other in real time. The service also alerts subscribers when friends or co-workers are online.

The service hiccup was caused by a router outage, according to AOL. The company said it was quickly able to reconnect subscribers through another portion of its network. Still, some who use the service in New York are reporting problems reconnecting to IM, CBS.MarketWatch.com has learned.

America Online owns the two most popular types of instant messaging software. In addition to Instant Messenger, the company runs ICQ, a service with an estimated 73 million users. It is not known whether ICQ subscribers' service also was affected.

http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/includes/onmoney_popup.htx?source=htx/http2_mw

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), October 06, 2000