Please get this straight. There is no confirmation whatsoever from AOL, the AOL rumor mill or anyone else that AOL is shutting down the message boards now or in the future. Several AOLers left comments on the article you linked to about it (or on another article Henry wrote on the topic, at least) stating the exact opposite, and I’m throwing my chips down with them.

The accepted explanation for the message boards being on the list is that AOL, as most people familiar with the story will agree, began shutting down the *FDO* version of them over a year ago. As far as anyone who is willing to talk is aware, the message boards themselves are not in danger of being shut down; AOL simply finished phasing out the old technology for them sometime between 2007 and this fall.

I hate to see AOL users get upset needlessly over this one item, since the message boards are the one thing that might very well cause riots among them the day AOL really does take them away.

Also, Peter, for your enlightenment and everyone else’s, I broke down the hit list much more thoroughly than anyone else has so far, so people can actually *understand* what has been taken away, and what will be taken away in the future. Feel free to read and comment about it here:

http://anti-aol.livejournal.com/tag/aol+hit+list

discontinue these:

1) AOL

This is exactly what happened in the 2000 time frame and I remember getting the same flurry of notices that my “stuff” had to be moved or it would be lost forever.

Maybe next time around these companies will decide to put monetizeation a bit further forward in the schedule. Oh, or put it on the schedule at all.