AOL Opening Up AIM Community to Third Parties

DaffyD writes "Refocusing its vision for AOL Instant Messenger, America Online is endeavoring to revitalize the service by opening up its community and presence to third parties. In addition to partners such as CareerBuilder, AOL is seeking to enlist independent developers to build extended AIM services and hopes to offer a plug-in architecture by the end of the year. ICQ recently added such functionality through its open XML-based Xtras feature. Maybe AOL is feeling the heat from alternatives such as Gaim and Adium."

Comments

Cleary a response

[w.p.richardson]

To being ditched by Time Warner.

Opening these formats for development will cause more innovation, which can't be bad for the bottom line.

YES!

[Leroy_Brown242]

I hope this is a sign of great things to come. I know that the GAIM, Bitlbee, and other crowds will hear this as music to our ears.

Hmm...

[JoeLinux]

If I were them, I'd find about USING gaim...its existing plug-in system has been tried and true, and can be used in many different OSs already. It can even plug into alternate IM systems while keeping the "AIM" name (G-AIM!) It could be like google: "Get on GAIM and talk to so-and-so...he's on MSN Messenger I think" The ads would still go to GAIM/AOL. Just a thought.

But hey...what do I know?

Smart Move, AOL

[randyest]

Instant messaging is big, and it's only going to get bigger. We even use it at work to hold beind-the-scenes asynchronous internal-only discussions between team members at different sites as we attend teleconferences with customers.

We used to use our cellphones for this, but the annoying rings and need to mute the main conference phone to talk with colleagues to establish strategies or get our stories consistent was a hassle.

Whoever has the easiest to use and most features in messenger clients is going to have an opportunity to make some money out of it in the neear future, especially as such clients get integrated into other devices (PDAs, cellphones, MP3 players? Network appliances? Toaster? :)

The interesting parts include the gist:

Major partners aren't the only focus for the company's new AIM vision. AOL is seeking to enlist independent developers to build extended services and points to ICQ's Xtras functionally as an example of its growing success with ISVs. AOL is working to provide a plug-in architecture by the end of this year.

"Our goal is to offer instant access to the AOL Instant Messenger service and the familiar AIM Buddy List feature everywhere consumers are and want to be, from their email application to their favorite online communities," said Chamath Palihapitiya, vice president and general manager for AIM and ICQ.

"As the real time communications service of choice for tens of millions of Americans, the AIM service brings dynamic interactivity to the sites and services that people use everyday."

Overall, AIM will play an important role in AOL's newfound portal strategy. In telephone interview, an AOL spokesperson told BetaNews that the company is at, "Just a beginning of where we intend to take the product," and promised deeper integration with other AOL Web properties.

Re:Don't Forget Trillian

[TargetBoy]

Between AIM installing spyware with the last release and the feature set of Trillian, I don't see AOL doing anything tha could lure me back to using their client.

The history feature of Trillian 3.0 is amazingly cool.

Re:What an about-face!

[Paul8069]

Shrinking user base? Where?
Everyone I know seems to use AIM now and the number seems to keep growing. I keep trying to get them to quit and switch to something else, but none of them will since AIM is the one everyone else they know uses.

Re:Please god let them do it right

[RTPMatt]

Uh, didnt they already do this?
I believe some programs such as naim (not to be confused with gaim) take advantage of this fact. I belive their system is open, but not all features (such as seeing an away message before IMing a person) are available...but i could be wrong

Re:Why No Standard?

[Jerf]

There is an IETF standard, XMPP. And as it is rather extensible, I'm sure it can do whatever AOL thinks they want to make their protocol do.

The problem is, other than Jabber, nobody (AFAIK) has implemented it. Ever so slowly, but ever so surely, it is sinking in that there is no longer any point to having your own "gated community" when everybody just has an account on all of the services and uses a multi-network IM client that still doesn't show your commercials.

If AOL chooses to release something other than XMPP that tries to solve the same problems, only in AOL's way, developers should shun the new protocol and insist that AOL implement the standard instead of creating their own. Things that can connect to XMPP exist today. Nothing today exists that can use Tomorrow's Yet Another Proprietary AOL Protocol.

Until this occurs, it still won't have fully sunk in. IM is commoditizing. Actually, it's already a commodity, and only by artificially locking up the market have the large networks made it even this far, and that is an unnatural, unstable accomplishment that will inevitably break down, not something to build a business on.

The AmericaOLn Way

[Doc Ruby]

How about AOL just opens up their "community" to outside clients, instead changing their protocol every few weeks just to lockout non-AOL Internetters from AIM? They want their Internet access to be a one-way street, but they want fresh new blood to reinvigorate their stagnant, isolated community. So, thinking like a corporation, they sign up new partners to bring inside AOL, rather than ride the innovation power of all the people who could connect if they opened their protocols and formats. It's supply-side community economics, and it won't work as well as defining the community by its members.

Re:What an about-face!

[caryw]

Hilarious that a couple of years ago a judge ruled that they have to open up their network before offering advanced features such as Video IM. They stubbornly stayed their ground and the FCC finally lifted the ruling once they lost some market share to Yahoo/MSN IM clients. And now they're opening it up anyway, shows how times have changed. I remember there being a slashdot article about this ages ago but I couldn't find it. Easy karma for anyone who does.
- Cary
--Fairfax Underground: Where Fairfax County comes out to play

This is NOT going to go over well

[ike6116]

Here is a great model I think AOL should pick up. Charge me 30 dollars for AIM. Make it feature rich, spy/adware free and charge me for the software. Not the service, the program. I know that doesn't sit well with the blind hippies among us but I have no problem paying for software if it's good. I'm in college, I dare say I couldn't function without AIM, hell this campus would damn near shut down without it. Charge me for the software and give me incentives to upgrade, it's daring, it's nutty, but I think it just might work.

Look to skype, not GAIM or MSN

[Matt Clare]

I don't think AOL are too concerned about having an open standard, blah blah.... I think they see VoIP and Skype as the next bet thing and want to get people like Vonage to use AIM IDs to call people.

You can do this now with 3rd party systyems like iChat and Macromedia Flash's lattest derivative Breeze.

Think MS Passport, only useful.

XMPP? Yes please!

[Trejkaz]

Imagining for a second that AIM does decide to implement XMPP such that Server-to-Server connections work properly from the hundreds of existing Jabber servers directly to AIM.

That would bump the number of users on XMPP from an estimated 10 million (old figure from a year ago) to an estimated 45 million (AIM's fiugre from the same time period.) If their other services AOLIM and ICQ switched over at the same time, the total would be more like 80 million.

These sort of numbers would be about enough interoperability to say that the battle has been won, IMO. Although I'm curious to know what sort of numbers MSN command at the moment.

But as a server admin, my main interest is in not needing to run a transport just to give access to foreign services. If the foreign services all used the same, standard protocol, life would be pretty damn sweet. :-)

This is meaningless.

[Anonymous Coward]

How generous and open AOL of to allow applications to hook into their SUCKY client! What a bunch of humanitarians. Praised be AOL.

I see posts here that say this will be good for projects like gaim... No, I don't see it that way at all. AOL is trying to lure people away from open implimentations like gaim, and towards AOL-sanctioned code, which they control.

You want to know how nice AOL is to third-party clients? Well, I wrote my own client. Recently, AOL took away my screen name, for "violation of the Terms of Service."

I can't imagine how I am in violation. I don't use AIM to do anything wrong. I use it to talk to my girlfriend, and a few of my friends here at University, maybe some family members. Oh, and I happen to have written a third party client. Apparently, there was something in that that AOL didn't like.

I have tried to contact AOL about this, ask them exactly WHAT it was that I did wrong. This was probably around a month ago. I haven't been able to get anything out of them.