AOL's Open AIM is an often over-looked social networking platform, mainly because instant messaging isn't thought of these days as a form of social networking. Perhaps, on its own, IM isn't social networking, but clearly it is an important feature -- both Facebook and MySpace have it, and AOL is planning to integrate its 80 million-strong AIM network into bebo as soon as possible. This week AOL announced the winners of its Open AIM developer competition. Below are the 9 winning applications that can improve your AIM experience.
AOL ran its $100,000 competition through TopCoder, which we just mentioned in our guide to the crowdsourced workforce. Of note is that the top three applications in the OpenAIM contest came from the same user -- who took home $30,000 for his efforts. Perhaps a new hire for AOL?
You can view the entire list of eligible submissions on the competition page.
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Disclaimer: I don't use AIM or any IM alot, but I used to be addicted.
These seem like some pretty good features to throw into any IM application. I especially like the whiteboarding, LinkPreview and Free2IM apps. Lack of decent whiteboarding facilities was always a shortcoming in my view.
Posted by: Jon | May 19, 2008 8:36 AM
I didn't think AOL was still around.
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