![Pixelated text reads 'brittney loves eric :]]' with a pink heart symbol above the name on black background.](/image/20971769ee9f7d4f25bc56d6b78fd39868863a6788ebd0b1cb904bbeb91d001d){kind=small}
![Pixelated text reads 'bianca loves ashley :]' with a red heart symbol replacing the 'a' in 'bianca' on the left side of the image.](/image/cb6dfa04e330b7442c019095f8156e974d80bce667c5f854a823424eaa72d0a4){kind=small}
![Pixelated image with text overlays: "I LUV FLIP FLOPS" over colorful shapes, "ALEXA LOVES THE EARTH" on white background, and "ASPEN LIKES PRUNES:]" with dark silhouette.](/image/d5dfd69e8739381135e8b68ec527065e6a9bf1bc27838ce608b776a22dea8d37){kind=small}
Preserving the tiny pictures that made the internet personal.
Category shelf
Browse 103 preserved Loves AIM buddy icons gathered from 8 source collections. This automatically maintained collection currently includes 101 animated icons and 103 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