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"I was wondering that too, was there AOL instant messaging back in 1997?"

I was wondering that myself. Looks like AOL had 6M IM users in 1996. Don't know, however, if it allowed the messages to be stored, archived and/or converted to text back then.

History
An early and partial form of messaging systems was implemented on private computer networks such as the PLATO system in the early 1970s. It was also available in the 1970s on the DEC PDP-11 as the "talk" program. Later the UNIX/LINUX "talk" messaging systems were widely used by engineers and academics in the 1980s and 1990s to communicate across the internet. MIT's Project Athena created the first instant messaging tool in 1987 with the graphical Zephyr client. PLATO was the first instant messenger combining presence or list of contacts with the ability to send messages. AOL had 6M subscribers using instant messaging when an Israeli company named Mirabilis introduced ICQ in November 1996 and was first to introduce this concept freely on the Internet. When the number of users of ICQ became a threat to AOL instant messaging service, AOL acquired Mirabilis/ICQ. A few years later AOL/ICQ was awarded two patents from the U.S. patent office. After its introduction, a number of variations of instant messaging have arisen in parallel in many places such as (Yahoo, MSN, Excite, Ubique), each with its own protocol. More secure corporate and commercial oriented solutions for instant messaging were introduced by IBM/(Lotus Sametime) and by others. This has led to users running many instant messaging applications simultaneously to be available on several networks. Multiprotocol clients such as Gaim, Trillian and Miranda reduce the need for independent clients for each protocol.

On single line bulletin board systems (BBS), the system operator (sysop) and the single caller online could typically chat with one another. One's typing appeared in real time for the other person as an instant message equivalent.

Recently, many instant messaging services have begun to offer video conferencing features, Voice Over IP (VoIP) and web conferencing services. Web conferencing services integrate both video conferencing and instant messaging capabilities..

On December 19, 2002, AOL Time Warner announced that ICQ had been issued a United States patent for instant messaging, but they also said that they had no plans on enforcing their patent at the present time.

The term "instant messenger" is a service mark of Time Warner[1] and may not be used in software not affiliated with AOL in the United States. For this reason, the instant messaging client formerly known as GAIM or gAIM is now only to be referred to as Gaim or gaim.

What really characterizes instant messaging from other forms of text messaging applications is the use of "presence" which enables the user of an instant messaging applications to rendez-vous with his/her counterparties and see their status of availability.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaging