AOL Opens Up AIM (sort of)

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AOL Opens Up AIM (sort of)

I've been critical of AOL recently on this blog, but not today. They are doing something smart in opening up the AIM platform for third party developers. Now if you are building a cool new web service and you want to incorporate AIM into your service, you can do it. That's great. Here is Ted Leonsis' take on it. And here is some good analysis of the move from Jupiter.

I had dinner with some people last month from AOL and I suggested they do this, but go one step further, which is opening up their network too. They didn't go that far yesterday, and frankly I think its a mistake.

AIM should connect to MSN, Yahoo!, and Skype. And anyone else with critical mass.

It's going to happen, because the market will force it to happen. If AOL leads the way, and they can because they have the largest IM customer base, they can shape it in ways that they benefit from.

But if they wait and let others do it to them (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! come to mind), they may be forced to do it on other's terms. And that would be a shame for them.

IM is like email. It's a basic and fundamental communication tool and it needs to be pervasive and interoperable. Nobody wants to have three or four IM clients, but we all do. Or we use Trillian (that's what I do) which takes the consumer away from the AIM brand.

A truly open AIM can be and should be the preferred gateway to a world of IM. Just one more step and AOL will be there. But they need to do it soon.

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Posted March 7, 2006 in Venture Capital and Technology

Comments

www.meebo.com has incorporated a central location for all AIM traffic. i beleive this is an example of what you are speaking about.

Posted by: Ryan McCaley | Mar 7, 2006 1:02:11 PM

Shame that it's Windows only for now - it would have been nice to release it with support for many platforms and languages. After all, not all clients will be running on the desktop.

Posted by: dwlt | Mar 7, 2006 1:08:24 PM

Great points Fred. There is a company called SIPphone that runs the Gizmo Project (www.gizmoproject.com) founded by Michael Robertson of mp3.com. They run an open SIP-based chat IM/VOIP platform that recently got connected to the Google IM network. I am a firm believer that the open network is the way to go. If you run a closed network, then you risk being left behind as things change. If you are interested, here are my thoughts on Gizmo:

http://purevc.typepad.com/pure_vc/2006/02/sipphone_gets_v.html
http://purevc.typepad.com/pure_vc/2006/02/sipphone_vs_sky.html

Once again, thanks for the great blog.

Posted by: james | Mar 7, 2006 4:43:19 PM

hey fred -- as you can imagine, we've been watching this space very closely for the past 2-3 years and here's a less-than-rosy analysis i found on this new AOL initiative.

http://missig.org/julian/blog/2006/03/06/aol-hates-open-source/

cheers!

Posted by: murray gray | Mar 7, 2006 6:59:45 PM

A VC

Musings of a VC in NYC