Stowe Boyd
and Mike
Arrington reported today that AOL’s new social networking product AIM Pages is now live. I’m told by my sources
that it’s still in the testing phase, nevertheless it *is* live on the Web. There is a lot more functionality to come though. For example
PaidContent wrote recently:
“Unlike walled-garden Classic AOL, AIM Pages is built on giving users ways to collect
and connect to various parts of the web — and each other — from one base. For
instance, users can add a flickr module. “Our approach is not to get you to leave
flickr but to super-set your stuff from flickr,” explained Parkins. Other modules
focus on AOL content, like the Top 11 list from AOL Music; options will be limited at
first with more modules being introduced on a rolling basis.”
As Mike said, the design is very modular – and that extends not only to internal AIM
Pages functionality, but also to external web services modules. From the AIM Pages
homepage, click on ‘Create your profle’. You will be taken to your profile page, click ‘Add Modules’ and then you will see a ‘Module Gallery’ at the top-left. The most interesting part in that gallery is
the ‘Under Construction’ selection. It currently features modules like delicious, netflix
and youtube – but there’s a whole lot more to come!
Check out AOL’s test ‘playground’ I Am Alpha to see what I mean. In
there you’ll see modules for popular web services such as: MySpace, YouTube, del.icio.us,
Flickr, Amazon, eBay, MapQuest, Netflix, AOL apps, RSS feeds, plus plenty of other test
modules. Now admittedly these are all very alpha quality modules (as the name implies),
but it shows that AOL is ahead of the curve in integrating external services into its
social networking offering. Note that I’m somewhat biased here, as Broadband
Mechanics (who I do work for) was contracted by AOL to build the following external
modules: NetFlix, Amazon, eBay, MySpace, Network for Good and Delicious. But still, I
think you’ll agree that AOL’s willingness to hook into external web services is a very
encouraging (and forward-thinking) break from the past for them. Tearing down those 90’s
Walled Gardens!
p.s. note that despite all the ‘MySpace killer’ theories out there, AIM Pages actually works *with* MySpace – in terms of having a module for it (in testing on I Am Alpha).
To try it out go to the I Am Alpha frontpage and
click the ‘playground!!’ tab. You need to log in using your AOL id in order to play
around – and this is the kind of page you can then create:
Below is a closer look at one of the modules, the Amazon one. As you can see, it shows
your Wish List and you can click the tab to see your Amazon reviews.
You can then publish your page into a pretty basic-looking ‘homepage’, which is a test
for AIM Pages. This is all very alpha right now and indeed what
you see currently on AIM Pages is just a slice of the real goodies. But given more
development and the inevitable marketing push, I think this will be a compelling product.
It’s a taste of what Internet portal homepages will be like in the future. As well as having social networking functionality, portals will integrate modules
for popular web services and be able to communicate (and
eventually transact) with those external services.
