![Pixelated cartoon character with brown curly hair and pink hat holding pink cat, text "I [heart] You" below, heart symbol changes color across frames.](/image/8f386fef6a1f27daf167ac787b928e83a39c3ee4e975ab3adff355eacb1cd9a6)
![Pixelated red text reads 'I lovee Nick<3' on left side with 'S: Myy Rino :]' on right side, both over a white background with faint rainbow-colored heart outline.](/image/8f4be8bbbc40f565ba9b5b0bf5cd07f9a4650b4c3279f86a7aca311010b12f98){kind=small}
Preserving the tiny pictures that made the internet personal.
Category shelf
Browse 140,592 preserved Pink AIM buddy icons gathered from 861 source collections. This governed collection currently includes 124,662 animated icons and 140,592 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