America Online has focused on blogging and community sites, and secured deals that make AIM the preferred or exclusive IM provider on them; it’s a series of shrewd moves that enhances the value of AOL’s advertising strategies.
AOL has announced a roster of significant communities, all newly inked to deals that place the company’s AIM service in a preferred situation with each. Facebook, LinkedIn, SixApart, and new fashion site Glam.com all have agreements with AOL that makes AIM and AIM Presence a feature for their services.
The AIM Presence is a line of HTML that displays whether a user is currently available on AIM. AOL notes the presence code can be customized via XML as well.
Facebook, the online directory that connects people at schools via social networking, will have AOL serve as its exclusive provider of instant messaging and “presence” technology. Six Apart, the provider of Movable Type, LiveJournal, and Typepad, will integrate AIM within its properties. That move will expose AIM to over 11 million users of those services.
Glam.com now has an exclusive deal to use AIM, which will allow its visitors to add an AIM name to a Glam profile, and connect to other users with text, voice, or video. An IM This’ button on Glam pages will let users share those pages or images with other AIM members.
The big winner in AOL’s deal making looks like business community site LinkedIn. That company will be AOL’s preferred provider of business profiles, letting AIM users integrate LinkedIn profiles to the ones they have with AIM.
Business profiles on LinkedIn can display the AIM Presence information. This integration will be offered at no cost to the site’s users. LinkedIn sees this integration as very beneficial. “By providing AIM presence information within LinkedIn, we provide our members with another vehicle for maintaining and strengthening existing business relationships,” said Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
