Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations

As Jason Calacanis, CEO of Weblogs Inc, pointed out, the blogosphere is rife with rumors that AOL is on the cusp of launching a social networking product to challenge MySpace. I cannot officially comment if this is true and on the timelines involved, but as Marc Canter pointed out this story was carried back in January by BusinessWeek so there's gotta be something to it.   As Tim O'Reilly said at AOLT's all-hands, IM, Mail, Voice and social networking are pretty much different facets of the same application, and who is in a better position to be a "disruptive force" in this arena than AOL with our 45 million+ Instant Messaging users.

Stay tuned.

Tags: AOL, MySpace, Social Networking

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• #3 Comment from dossyshiobara 
  4/21/06 10:59 AM | Permalink

  If you were Microsoft, you might define "everyone" as "every Microsoft web property" -- in which case, they can declare Passport a success.
• #2 Comment from armughanjavaidEntry Author 
  4/21/06 9:15 AM | Permalink

  Point taken Dossy. Though MSFT has not been successful at everything of course. Remember MS Passport that was going to solve everyone's identity problems?
• #1 Comment from dossyshiobara 
  4/20/06 5:51 PM | Permalink

  "[...] who is in a better position to be a "disruptive force" in this arena than AOL with our 45 million+ Instant Messaging users."
  
  I realize that was supposed be rhetorical, but the answer is MSN.
  
  http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2002/sep02/09-04msn8momentum2002pr.mspx
  
  "MSN Messenger reached a record growth milestone with more than 75 million users worldwide*.
  
  * According to Microsoft internal measurement"
  
  Yeah.
  
  If Microsoft is smart about this, they can give AOL a 1+ year head start and integrate social networking into Windows Vista.  Game over.