![Pixelated green hearts, yellow butterflies, and cyan hearts float over a white background with scattered colored dots, while blue text reads 'Gabrielle' with a heart symbol and 'Thats Me :]'.](/image/ad2b531c62e4ee5c4d06c0da82e3b9c992b2960f47ce3d0d82aa223106357a99)
![Cyan background with repeated pink text 'i want to rape brett ;]' and small white star-like shapes scattered across the image.](/image/ad4d98ec4436beca80f91a76c594cf41508c45affb5427dbe0d69fb66ad63f41){kind=small}
![Cyan text reading "Jenessa is the best =]" on a pink background with yellow star-like symbols appearing and disappearing in different positions across frames.](/image/ad622221a46853fcc0263fe823ac86b0b1ff6834e3b28fa45bb8f10a46455e0d){kind=small}
Preserving the tiny pictures that made the internet personal.
Category shelf
Browse 83,771 preserved Text AIM buddy icons gathered from 599 source collections. This automatically maintained collection currently includes 79,190 animated icons and 83,771 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