Normally I avoid the hype on such things, but this deserves some attention – AIM Pages coming launch signals a return to core competencies. AOL’s chatroom/profile/buddy discovery system was the first large scale ‘social networking’ app that normal folks used and loved. It changed the way we communicated (remember “You Got Mail?” folks?).
What’s so amazing about this you ask? Well it’s amazing it took AOL this long to leverage it’s AIM user base and get back in the game of connecting people.
Ask yourself how do you discover new online friends and how do they get on your buddy list. Think back to 1997 for a second. Remember how you did it back then? Think hard about it. Come back to the present day and watch a teenager use MySpace. Anything familiar?
MySpace is the the second generation (third most likely) of that system from way back when. That’s why some of the digerati dismiss or even hate it so much – it empowers normal folks to use the web for what they want to use it for – communicate and connect – and it looks messy.
If AOL gets their mojo back – and it is social networking that was AOL’s first true blue call to fame – then the space will get interesting. Yahoo!’s 360 is boring and kinda complicated sadly. Will AIM Pages be any different? We shall see.
This is way overdue – and in the meanwhile, hundreds of shadowy programs/sites have sprung up that allow people to add things to their AIM profiles beyond the normal character limit. Subprofile, IMChaos, etc..
I think so too. They fumbled on AOL Journals (their attempt at a blogging platform). But for most folks, blogging is a subset of managing an online identity, and that is how it is at MySpace, and that is what it looks to be here.