Software:AIM Fight

AIM Fight was a program designed to compare the popularity of two AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) screen names. AIM Fight was not an official AOL product.

To "fight," two screen names are entered into the Web page and then each screen name was run through an algorithm that runs through the buddy lists of everybody signed on at that particular moment. The algorithm returns a score that represents the sum of the number of people who have those screen names listed as a buddy out to the third degree. As explained on the AIM Fight Web page, the score cannot increase by adding people to that user's buddy list, but rather having other people add the user to their buddy list. Depending on how well-connected these people are, the increase in the score can vary.

Although the score represents a numerical sum of the people who have that screen name listed as a buddy and are currently signed on, the help page later states that the actual score was relative to how many people are connected to AIM. Although the term rank usually assumes that each person has a unique position, multiple users can share the same AIM Fight rank, including rank 1.

Web API

The API consists of a single URL called by the Adobe Flash applet that returns the scores and ranks of the users. Additionally, it returns heights for the bars for the applet to show.

It was accessed at http://www.aimfight.com/getFight.php?name1=SCREENNAME1&name2=SCREENNAME2

By replacing SCREENNAME1 and SCREENNAME2 with the screen names of the individuals to fight, percent-encoded data was returned in the following format:

&success=1&score1=132451&score2=6004&oscore1=27241&oscore2=0&height1=99&height2=4

• success returns whether or not the fight was a valid one (0 if no, 1 if yes)
• score1 represents the score of the first screen name entered
• score2 represents the score of the second screen name entered
• oscore1 shows the rank of the first screen name if it is in the Top 5%
• oscore2 shows the rank of the second screen name if it is in the Top 5%
• height1 is the height of the first screen name's bar
• height2 is the height of the second screen name's bar

External links

• AIM Fight

Software Utilizing the API

• The Slashdot user jcuervo created a perl wrapper
• The Slashdot user DBergere wrote a shell script wrapper
• Justin Mazzi wrote a PHP script that lets AIM Fight operate in PHP.
• Tim Dorr wrote a Mac OS X Dashboard widget.
• John Fronckowiak wrote a new and improved Mac OS X Dashboard widget you can also read about the development details.
• Gus Verdun wrote an AMO plugin called Fight Buddy that lets you get AIM Fight scores in AIM 6.8.