The new logos are just a preview of AOL's revamped look and are meant to replace AOL's swoosh triangle for good. The AOL "running man," however, will stick around the brand in some form, although the company isn't saying exactly where he will show up.

But the updated logos are a little off-putting to some. Noted technology blogger Om Malik of GigaOM posted his gut reaction Sunday night, calling them out as "lame," "ambiguous at best," and "as sexy as the obese, shapeless humans living on Axiom, the flagship of the BnL fleet in Pixar movie WALL-E." Ouch!

But it's easy to see where he's coming from. After all, some of the logos look more like the sorts of doodles you would find gracing high-schoolers' notebooks - like the hand doing the "sign of the horns" hand gesture. Really. "Rock on!," shouts the logo, but it reminds us more of a middle-aged heavy metal fan reminiscing about their youth than the young, hip company AOL desperately hopes to become.

Then there is the pink glob. The best way to describe this logo is a fluffy wad of bubble gum. A green scribble looks like someone had trouble getting their ballpoint ink pen going and a generic blue swirl seems to signify nothing but a lack of imagination. What content sites are these logos even associated with? Your guess is as good as ours.

CNET calls the goldfish logo "cute" (sarcastically?), but AOL isn't trying to build the next LOLcats empire, so maybe they should have forgone "cute" for something a little more meaningful and modern.

But that's just our opinion. What's yours? Let us know in the poll below.

Rapleaf says that despite their collection methods, their findings can offer insight into these different userbases. To some extent, that may be true, but we're left wondering how different these findings would be if they hadn't relied on public social media data and rather went with a true random sample.

Gmail Skews Young, AOL Older

That being said, here's what Rapleaf came up with. In terms of age:

It's not all that surprising that Gmail users tend to be young. After all, the service was established years after AOL, Hotmail, and Yahoo. Some of those who already had webmail accounts on other services were hesitant to switch at first (and some still are) since the process of changing email accounts is never entirely painless and often leads to months of checking dual inboxes for emails that may have been missed. Instead, Google's growth likely came from more webmail first-timers looking to set up their brand-new online accounts in addition to the braver "email switchers," a group that also probably skews younger...especially since an effective switchover often requires a bit of technical savvy involving setting up forwarding, auto-responders, etc.

As for AOL being comprised of older users, that too, is relatively unsurprising. Where Google is the newest service, AOL is one of the oldest. Its core user base has aged with it over the years and those who haven't jumped shipped yet are bound to be the older members who don't stay as current with changing technology trends. Still, setting the bar for "old" at 36 is a little humbling - especially for those of us getting up in our years. (That's not old, is it?) It would be interesting to see further breakdowns of this demographic into age segments including 40+, 50+, and so on, but that data was not available.

Gmail Has More Females, Hotmail Has More Males

Perhaps more interesting is the gender variations between the services. Gmail, for instance, includes more females (53%) than males (47%). If those were election poll results, we would call it "too close to call," but in terms of tens of thousands of users, these percentage point differences have meaning.

Why would Gmail attract more females? And conversely, why does Hotmail have more males? (It's 57% male.) Is there something about the aesthetics, workflow or features in those services that appeal more to women than men or vice versa? And if so, what? Unfortunately, raw data can't provide these sorts of answers, but they're definitely intriguing to us. We would imagine they are intriguing to the user interface designers and engineers behind the products, too.

Do women like Gmail's drag-and-drop features or its themes? Do men prefer Hotmail's efficient "quick adds" which allow for one-click additions of Bing content to messages? We doubt those are the reasons for the discrepancy, but it makes us wonder what are. Try as we might, we can't come up with an easy theory to explain this. (If you can, please share in the comments.)

Future details about the study will focus on other data including online activity, friend counts, and social network memberships. Stay tuned to Rapleaf's site for more information.

In yesterday's attack, the list of comprised Hotmail accounts were limited to those where the usernames started with the letter "A" or "B." However, that seemed to imply that the posted portion might actually be a part of a bigger list containing even more login/password combinations. At the time, a Microsoft spokesperson said that the company determined "this was not a breach of internal Microsoft data and initiated our standard process of working to help customers regain control of their accounts." Instead, claimed the spokesperson, those users whose credentials were revealed were likely to be victims of an online phishing attack where a third-party website was involved.

Phishing attacks are typically carried out via email messages where the attacker tricks the recipient into revealing their username and password by pretending to be some sort of trustworthy entity such as the user's bank, IT administrator, a popular website, or an online service. In the case of the stolen Hotmail passwords, it's possible that the attacker sent emails which claimed to be from the end user's email provider. If the user then followed the link contained within the malicious email, they would have ended up not on the actual email provider's site, but on a third-party site whose sole purpose was to capture their username and password when entered.

Beyond Hotmail: More Webmail Providers Affected

According to a story in today's BBC News, the most recent list of compromised accounts, which includes login credentials for Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Earthlink, and Comcast users, contains some accounts that appear to be old, unused, or fake. However, many others listed are, in fact, genuine.

There's no way to be sure at this point that the new list is a part of the same phishing attack as yesterday's or if it's a new and separate scam.

The website where the accounts were posted - pastebin.com - is now "down for maintenance." Visitors to the site today will receive a message that reads:

Pastebin.com is getting an unprecedented amount of traffic due to a news story in which some leaked Hotmail passwords have been pasted on this site

Pastebin.com was intended as a tool to aid software developers, not for distributing this sort of material. Filters have been put in place to prevent reoccurrence, but the current traffic level is unsustainable.

Pastebin.com is just a fun side project for me, and today it's not fun. It will remain offline all day while I make some further modifications

Paul Dixon

Regardless of whether or not you think your account was compromised, today would be a good day to change the password on whichever webmail service you currently use. Better safe than sorry!

Now, with the introduction of Socialthing for Websites, a service that made a quiet debut last week on AOL's country music destination "The Boot," AOL is transforming all their media properties into social media properties.

How it Works

With Socialthing, web site visitors can sign in to the various web sites using their AOL screenname and password, and soon their Bebo, Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo, or OpenID, instead of having to create a new account on the site. This ability puts it up against other single sign-in heavyweights like Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect. The authentication is made possible by the AOL Open Authentication (OpenAuth) Platform which allows sites to authenticate users using AOL and AIM usernames and passwords and is now being expanded to support the other services as well.

In addition, visitors can also chat with each other over AIM and ICQ while on the site itself, a feature that allows for real-time interactions between those who share common interests.

And then there is, of course, the social syndication aspect. Site visitors will be able to share messages and experiences across the social web including sites like Bebo, AIM, ICQ, Facebook, Myspace and Twitter.

Socialthing Differentiates Itself from FriendFeed & Competes with Facebook Connect

The authentication aspect, the active social sharing, and the online chat now set the new Socialthing for Websites apart from its one-time competitor FriendFeed. Today's Socialthing service is much more than a simple lifestream aggregator - it's a tool that can transform closed sites into social web portals. But will Socialthing pick up any traction outside of AOL's own properties? It could since the platform is open for developers to build services on top of it or integrate it into their own sites. That may actually have some appeal over, say, Facebook Connect for example, since it won't limit you to sharing your content with just one social networking site.

However, now that Facebook has opened up their data streams to developers, it's clear that the battle for conversation control is just getting started. Despite Socialthing's open nature, it's possible they'll still have a tough time competing considering the Facebook revolution that's currently underway.

AOL says Socialthing will launch on their blog for movie enthusiasts, Cinematical, in the "coming weeks" before rolling out the technology to the rest of their sites.

Customization and Widgets for Social Networks

AOL users can now see updates from AIM, Facebook, and MySpace right on the homepage. Support for Bebo and Twitter is coming soon. This move comes just a few weeks after AOL also allowed its users to check mail from third-party email services right from the homepage.

The most interesting update is probably the inclusion of a prominent RSS reader widget at the bottom of the homepage.

The new AOL homepage also allows users to customize the main navigation bar with bookmarks, local news, and RSS feeds. AOL Mail has also been updated to match the look and feel of the new homepage.

AOL also announced that it will now give advertisers the option to offer customized wallpapers for the homepage and more rich media content through AOL's Platform A.

Is Traffic to AOL.com Growing?

According to AOL, year-over-years visits to AOL.com grew 15%, while total minutes were up 40%. It should be noted, however, that both Compete and Google Trends show a downwards trend over the last year.

While it might be hard to get excited about new features on AOL, it is good to see that the company is bringing more social networking and customization features to its user base.

Earlier this year, AOL acquired Bebo for a hefty $850 million. While the news was huge, we didn't think the acquisition would be particularly beneficial to AOL or Bebo. I don't see this being any different with SocialThing! in the picture now. The acquisition is still coming to a close and no financial details have yet to be released. SocialThing! has published a blog post with more details about the acquisition.

Web 2.0 Going Mainstream?

This acquisition may have other results outside of bringing AOL more consumers. For instance, lifestreaming is definitely picking up in the mainstream arena. We've written plenty of articles about lifestreaming in recent weeks because we're noticing that the trend is spreading. Is it going mainstream? There has definitely been a ton of recent activity to hint at it. First, Facebook integrates the aggregation of popular services such as Twitter and Flickr. Now AOL is snapping up SocialThing!. It should only be a matter of time before bids for FriendFeed start to float around. Outside of lifestreaming, but still in the web 2.0 arena, CBS acquired Last.FM last year for $280 million. So, let me rephrase my question: are different components of web 2.0 going mainstream or is the entire concept finally catching on?

While SocialThing does the things it does well, it never quite got the hype and user base that its nearest direct competitor Friendfeed has been getting for the last few months. While SocialThing CEO and founder Matt Galligan pointed out to us that he doesn't think SocialThing is actually competing with FriendFeed, the similarities between the two are just too striking.

It is true, though, that SocialThing is less focused on creating an internal community and puts more emphasis on sharing information back to the aggregated services than Friendfeed, especially since they just integrated ping.fm updates.

It will be interesting to see what AOL is going to do with this new property. Chances are that it will be integrated into AOL's new BuddyUpdate service or that the SocialThing team will move over to work on BuddyUpdates while SocialThing itself will become a thing of the past.

"Our goal is to facilitate the world's online, real-time conversations anytime and anywhere," said David Liu, Senior Vice President, AOL People Networks in a press release. "To that end, we're not only giving developers more opportunities and incentives to create meaningful instant messaging-based applications for our millions of users, but we're also bringing more requested features and innovation to the AIM platform to satisfy user needs."

Participating in AOL Money is free, and developers are required to include a display ad widget that runs alongside their web or software based AIM mashup. Payments are made monthly via PayPal. Ads are handled by AOL's "Platform A."

In addition to the wide release of AOL Money, the company is announcing a new version of the AIM software and a corresponding new release of the Open AIM API that takes advantage of the latest features of the client software. Perhaps the most compelling new feature for developers is the addition of "mini applications." Mini apps are widgets that run inside of the AIM client software and can be accessed by users from a bar at the base of their buddy list.

• IM Remote - Screen to screen desktop sharing over AIM.
• IM Loud: This plugin reads IMs out loud to the user.
• IM Whiteboard: Use AIM as a whiteboard and simultaneously draw with buddies.
• LinkPreview: Thumbnail link previews when hovering over a link sent to you in chat.
• Free2IM: Possibly one of the most useful applications in the entire bunch, Free2IM provides automatic, on-the-fly language translation back and forth over IM. That's something we had on our wish list last March when Google released its AJAX Language API.

• Infomess: Chat and share videos at the same time.
• Share-A-Map: Share and collaboratively edit MapQuest maps. Giving someone directions will never be the same...
• PopsChat: Bound to score points with TopCoder users, this plugin brings AIM chat and features to the TopCoder Arena (a chat and messaging area).
• FeedReader: An RSS feedreader for AIM.

You can view the entire list of eligible submissions on the competition page.

The news of the move was received quietly, deemed proof by some critics that the project was just a failed Digg-clone; that its paid editors, friendly design and broad topic areas just didn't have the raw masculine power to discover great stories that Digg offers in its wild, untamed model of social news. That sounds ridiculous to me, but I don't spend any time on Netscape, either - I like Digg. (See also TechCrunch's mockery of Propeller, pirate style.)

The way the service works is interesting. For those unfamiliar, news on Netscape/Propeller is submitted by users but highlighted and shepherded by a team of paid power-users and editors. That paid team also does some original writing.

The whole arrangement has been highly controversial since it launched in June of 2006. Paying power users was a move widely criticized, and not because they were hired away from other sites like Digg. Critics alleged that news discovery was best done for the love of it.

A social news site that hired people to tend the news also attracted users old enough to have jobs. Project head Tom Drapeau confirmed for me today that the user demographics of the site are older than other social news sites, something he says leads to a "better perspective on news." He also told me that the number of paid Anchors and Scouts (the two job types) has almost tripled since the program was put in place.

The Future of Propeller: Personalization

What does the future of Propeller look like? Drapeau says the company is working on a new social news platform that will increase usability and put personal relevance at the center of the user experience. It would be great to see a whole new site that adds personalization based on user profiles to the combination of editorial control and group decision making that's there now. Automated personalization or recommendations are things Digg doesn't offer at all.

Digg underwent its own set of changes today, expanding user profiles to resemble a traditional social networking site. I asked Drapeau about those changes to Digg. He said he hadn't had a chance to see them live yet but that communication between users via sitemail has been a very popular feature at Netscape. Did you know, by the way, that Propeller also supports login by OpenID? It's a little clunky - but Digg's been waiting for OpenID 2.0 to go live before implementing it.

Perhaps then the Netscape team got a few things right after all. Digg's turn towards social networking looks to me like a move toward a more standard model. If Propeller can successfully build a new system powered by personalization algorithms - they could become the innovation leaders in the social news space.