![Red background with black text reading 'i love you brandi :]' and date '6.27.09', featuring a white pixelated heart symbol.](/image/d7c12b944b57bdc1c086a869d3c7cbe8d7f65c642bc90cb4208e5f19f4324330){kind=small}
![Green pixelated text on blue background reads 'i love my bellybuddie <8-jds=]' with pink and purple heart symbols below, two identical frames side-by-side.](/image/d7ecb08292d1c8b1edde623e2444543a0f8758e0a175de50f27d76567f6c8dc1){kind=small}
![Two side-by-side pixelated images of a character with light brown hair against a dark background, each displaying 'I [heart] LOR' text with color variations.](/image/d7f28a29b060ba8700027112dc7fdd357d5cbe85575037de23275535f4b6651d)
Preserving the tiny pictures that made the internet personal.
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Browse 78,215 preserved Hearts AIM buddy icons gathered from 462 source collections. This governed collection currently includes 73,541 animated icons and 78,215 icons with searchable visual descriptions.
From the archivist
It started with a game that needed a few authentic AIM icons. Then I had 1,000. Then 10,000. At some point, I had a buddy icon problem.
Read how this happenedYou made it this far
You have scrolled past 1,024 buddy icons, so I have some suspicions. My blog is where the other shiny digressions end up.
Subscribe to Shedletsky.comA 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