MySpace, AOL Joust with Competing Products
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Written By Reprise Media | May 11, 2006 | Share This
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Yesterday, AOL released their much-hyped AIM Pages Social networking product to public beta. Meanwhile, across Internet Town, MySpace quietly came out with its own instant messaging application, creatively titled MySpaceIM.
As far as AIM Pages goes, it was touted as a MySpace Killer; so far, it’s more of a buzz killer. It’s easy to mock up a serviceable profile page, but there’s nothing exactly groundbreaking under the hood. The AJAX-based layout is easier to play around with than a relatively cumbersome MySpace profile, and…that’s the long and short of it. As for coming preloaded with all your AIM buddies as an instant network, well, that’s how it should work in theory, but not if none of your buddies bothers making a page. TechCrunch put it like this: “If AIM Pages launched today as a stand alone company with no affiliation to AOL, I’d be ripping it apart.”
So what about MySpaceIM? A very similar story; it doesn’t do anything mind-blowing, but it’s clean, and you can add your MySpace friends to your IM friend list - you can’t do much chatting with them until they download and install the software, however. And because MySpace “soft-launched” the application, relatively few of its users seem to be aware of its existence right now. So chances are you’re stuck IMing with MySpace mascot Tom, who’s set to respond to every missive with a brief “Woo!”
Marketing Shift likens the stand-off to a heavyweight bout between a sumo and a boxer, but so far it looks like a couple of fellas trying half-heartedly to step on each others’ toes and missing.
Whatever shape the contest takes, the combatants could be in danger of losing a major chunk of the battlefield. Techdirt says that pending federal legislation would require any school receiving cash from Uncle Sam to ban the use of social networking sites and IM programs, to protect kids from “online predators.” Of course, many schools already forbid such activities - to protect kids from ignoring their schoolwork.
Topics: Social Media |