Although it’s still somewhat of a rumour, AOLTimeWarner is the largest company in the Entertainment industry and the 40th ranked company on the Fortune 500. If there is a rumour that they will be releasing a “MySpace Killer,” it simply can’t be ignored. AOL has made a couple different moves to capitlize on the ever-growing power of the social networking niche, first opening up AIMÂ? to harness the power of their userbase, and then using that to help launch “AIMSpace.” Business 2.0 has a short article about the project, and has linked to a post on downloadsquad.comÂ? by Armughan Javaid, Program Manager in AOL Technologies’ Open Services group, that seems to confirm the soon-to-be-released website will allow non-AIM members to join.

One of the points I like to stress in talking about social networking websites, and really any website or businessÂ? that tries to slide into such a crowded market, is what will make them different or give them an advantage over those already established. With AIMSpace, it is quite obvious. AIM has an activeÂ? userbase of over 63 million, and by creating their own website from scratch, many of the downfalls/shortcomings of MySpace can be avoided - programming inÂ? Web2.0Â? and integratingÂ? popular AOL features are the two that firstÂ? come to mind. There are several questions that come to mind when thinking about social networking websites, as I mention in my Un-Social Networking post, at least there is an angle to be worked by AIM - or 63 million different angles to work.

Digg this entry! This entry was posted on Thursday, April 20th, 2006 at 9:19 am and is filed under Main, Social Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.