![Pixelated pink background with white text reading "i heart yooh stephen :]" and five small hearts below, two of which are light pink.](/image/f691c9f2d7cef9fd7a659fe64b07e090818f1b4897adbf821f5357290b972b0d){kind=small}
![Pixelated text and symbols on black background: pink lowercase 'i', white heart outline, pink words 'love lizz duffyyy :]', all static.](/image/f69a1f36987cbb675aa603b9a38c3d6ecc8761f27730fcbe94acc0698cff0061){kind=small}
Preserving the tiny pictures that made the internet personal.
Category shelf
Browse 21,062 preserved Affectionate AIM buddy icons gathered from 338 source collections. This automatically maintained collection currently includes 19,647 animated icons and 21,062 icons with searchable visual descriptions.
A language of tiny pictures
A picture barely 50 pixels wide, sitting beside an AIM screen name, could announce a mood, a fandom, an inside joke, or who someone wanted to be that day.
Read the short historyRecovered from the early web
Buddy icons survive in old directories, fan sites, downloadable packs, and web archives. The archive preserves the original files, groups known copies, and records where each one was found.
How the archive works