AIM Pages launches
AOL's much-talked-about social networking site AIM Pages launched today in beta form at AIMPages.com. Logging in with your AIM screen name takes you to the profile editor, which has a neat drag-and-drop Ajax interface. By default your AIM Pages profile has a few "modules" like the obligatory photo and "About Me" box, and you can add other modules like RSS feeds, photo tickers from Flickr or AOL, and even games, by dragging them to the column and position you would like them to appear. Each module has "Edit" and "Style" buttons for changing their settings and appearances. It also has more than 75 built-in themes which range from clean to cutesy to garish, and after choosing a theme you can further customize it. I've only used AIM Pages for about a half hour so far, but my earliest impressions are that it's a whole lot better than MySpace (though my MySpace experience is similarly limited), the integration with AIM is great but could be better, the Ajax is cool (and occasionally useful) but lacks the "snappiness" I've come to expect from Ajax apps. I'm not sure that AIM Pages is ready for the MySpace crowd yet (think Microsoft-grade beta, not Google beta), but there's one thing that, as a web geek, I'm very excited about: the open API. "Open" is not a word we tend to associate with AOL (and I write for them!), but for awhile now AOL has been running a site called I Am Alpha which is a testbed and resource for people who want to build modules for what turned out to be AIM Pages. I haven't attempted to create a module myself yet (and it's unclear what the protocol is for actually getting a module you made into AIM Pages), but the documentation is free and open, which opens up possibilities for AIM Pages that I'm sure even its developers haven't thought of.
The blogosphere is replete today with chatter about AIM Pages. For more discussion, take a look at Michael Arrington's less-than-glowing first impressions at TechCrunch, some optimistic views from Richard MacManus' Read/Write Web and J. Botter, and more commentary from Stowe Boyd and Vecosys.
