If you want to take a peek at how AOL plans to take on Facebook, you need to look beyond Bebo (the social network it bought for $850 million last year) to theBoot, a country music site hidden away off in a corner of AOL Music. A very interesting experiment is going on at theBoot that represents a major plank in AOL’s social-networking strategy. It shows how AOL plans to take on Facebook Connect, which is Facebook’s way of letting other Websites tap into its members and their activity streams.
AOL is adding its own twist to spreading activity streams across the Web through a combination of its SocialThing lifestreaming service (which it bought last year and was recently rolled out inside of Bebo) and AIM chat. It is called Socialthing for Websites.
When you visit theBoot, you will see a thin toolbar along the bottom that is labeled Socialthing on the bottom left (think of it as FriendFeed) and on the bottom right it invites you to sign in using an AIM account. (Yes, that is yet another frame). Once you sign in, your AIM username and password becomes your username and password for the site, just like Facebook Connect extends Facebook IDs to other sites. OAuth and OpenID options are planned for the near future.
Next to the Socialthing icon on the toolbar is a prominent gear icon for privacy settings and an “Updates” tab. You can choose to always share your activity on the site, never share it, or always be asked before sharing. When you click on Updates, a window pops up showing you “Site Updates” and “Buddy Updates.” The site updates is a stream of new stories and comments going on right now at theBoot. You can tab over to “Buddy updates” to see status messages from people on your buddy list, as well as actions of your friends from other services including Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and StumbleUpon..
Whenever you comment on a story or take another action on the site itself, that comment appears not only in the site updates stream, but all of your buddies on AIM will see a little info icon next to your name, which if they click on will show your recent comment with a link back to the site. In other words, AOL is taking the 45 million active users of AIM and finally turning them into the underpinnings of a social network. Once you sign in with your AIM account, a couple chat tabs appear on the bottom right. You can chat with other AIM members on the site or you can have a private chat with people you know on your buddy list. (You can also invite your friends to the site that way). Part of Facebook Connect, I should note, also includes Facebook Chat, so there is overlap here. But AOL still has the advantage when it comes to chat.
The whole project is not what you’d expect to see from AOL. Maybe that is because the product is being led by Alex Bard, the founder and former CEO of Goowy, another startup AOL picked up as a small acquisition last year. It took a while, but some of that startup DNA is finally starting to rub off on the rest of AOL.
What AOL is trying to do is combine public and private message streams. You can see public streams on the Socialthing side of the toolbar and both public and private chat on the right. You can expect to see AOL roll out Socialthing for Websites across all of AOL Music, Moviefone and potentially all of the properties under its MediaGlow umbrella, which has a collective audience of 70 million unique visitors in the U.S. After AOL rolls out Socialthing for Websites to its own properties, you can bet that it will offer it to other Websites as well. The appeal would be that this is a way to socialize their sites that isn’t Facebook. It also gives them the ability to inject their content directly into consumer’s activity streams through Socialthing.
Another twist that AOL is planning on adding soon is a way to filter all of these streams of information by prioritizing which public streams you see based on who you chat with the most in private. Since AOL knows your chat history, it can move to the top the public comments, Tweets, and links to Flickr, YouTube and whatnot that come from your closest contacts—the ones you actually speak to (assuming you use AIM).
AOL is offering Socialthing to Websites for free because it could provide really valuable data on who is visiting what sites that could be used to target content and advertising in the future directly into the lifestream. AOL will have to tread carefully there, limiting sponsored updates, but that is an obvious direction.
Now all AOL has to do is refresh its AIM client to include the the lifestream from Socialthing so that users can see one unified activity stream of both public and private messages all in one place.
good idea. AOL might have something here.
Is that bar in a frame? Is this more “attack of the frames”?
yup, everyone is doing it
Nope, not a frame.
No it’s not a frame, it’s just a div with position: fixed.
Nice job AOL
I think AOL is making a smart move here. I don’t like predicting the future, but who knows: maybe they will one day be able to reach old heights. At least they seem to be more open to innovation right now than back in the days.
Btw, sorry for off topic: I’m working on my bachelor right now and you could really help me by taking part in my survey about Social Media and the ‘08 elections.
“thing” in the name worries me.
yea, “thang” would be much cooler
http://www.zenbylunch.com
“thing” says to me you don’t know what it is or how you want people to think about it. Even if they say they were being cute, I don’t see how anyone serious about a product would have “thing” in the name. It feels like something they’re throwing against the wall to see if it sticks. That to me is not an offering i want to spend a bunch on time on.
Thing says to me they didn’t want to pay extortion money to domain hijackers to get the domain they really wanted.
Whether or not you like country music, you have to admit, that’s a great website. Clean, organized, appealing, usable.. all the earmarks of success, and a thriving community to support it. Well done, AOL.
Guys, really AOL is dead.
I know, I work there. (unfortunately/fortunately it pays the bills)
please resign tomorrow. thank you.
you don’t belong. please leave yesterday.
The way things are going, it won’t be long
nicely done, mattgalligan the indiekid!
go socialthing, go!
It’s not “Socialthing”, but try this for a spin: http://www.tiseme.com
I had no idea AOL had a site for Country Music – agree with TJ, great site. I like Country and have found small sites for pieces here and there but this site is a great overall country music site. Smart on the social thing – I just logged in via my aim name and it worked as described in the post. AOL’s got an audience of 70 Million for its MediaGlow sites in the U.S., who knew? Not sure how this beats Facebook Connect though, what is the advantage here?
AOL might be dead, it might not be dead. You can bet it won’t go down without a fight.
we have been waiting for aol to step outside the box for eternity.
now that the ron-dy leadership is gone things seem to be gaining momentum. its gonna get open social exciting from here on out.
OpenLocator.com – free for all
Awesome stuff!!!
Alex Bard should be sitting next to the new CEO.
@schonfeld
Now all AOL has to do is refresh its AIM client to include the the lifestream from Socialthing so that users can see one unified activity stream of both public and private messages all in one place.
- tick tock, tick tock…just a matter of time. when you’re up against the wall you have two choices…guess which one AOL is choosing.
More to come…
In the meantime…feel free to check out the cool stuff YHOO and MSN are doing. LOL.
Hope the AOL patents are rock solid on this stuff.
theBoot.com is actually the #1 country music site according to comScore. Maybe this feature will push it even further?
when people realize what AOL actually does they will then realize AOL isn’t “dead”.
Hopefully soon TechCrunch will be able to add it to their site and we will all be able to log in and have a live conversation about it.
The big concern with this type of stuff for large websites is how they are in essence opening up a huge anonymous* forum for website visitors to blast away at their website. I realize it’s opt-in, but I might go to this http://www.theboot.com and in the chat room, I can see all the prior conversation — I can see some crude remarks about http://www.theboot.com (and I might believe them), or I might see links to http://www.cmt.com (the competition!!!).
These are the fears of the majority of big websites.
Seems like everybody is fighting to be the social login for everything. But if all the big players start making their own systems, it will become a clutter of login possibilities for webdevelopers that want to use a social login system to entice users to login to our site.
I bet the Boot visitors would love this enhancement. I’m throwing $ on anything Alex Bard and Frank Gruber are involved with. Those AOL blogs have been killing it and this just makes them better.
Congratulations Alex. Nice work.
Are you going to make it to Sierra City this year? We can settle the battle for best major IM service over a game of dominoes.
When you said “hidden away in a corner” you weren’t kidding. I wish I could find it – I’d like to check it out. Cool idea.
Wow, this is very cool. Tucking all of these tools away at the bottom of the browser really makes them handy when you need them and barely noticeable when you don’t.
Not to mention hooking into a massive group of users that already have a username for this service with the integration with AOL. It seems like AOL and Yahoo! have some excellent ideas and have the content and user base to back it up but things usually fall apart with the execution and marketing of it. Maybe this will buck that trend.
Very cool!
@macadaan
Gruber? Really? Does he do anything but jet around the country looking pretty, occasionally stopping in to preside over bad but trendy product concepts? His bio raves about myAOL, which is so successful you haven’t heard anything about it in a year. Go Frank, I guess. My money is on this Alex guy, who at least seems to do something other than blogwhore all day.
@JamesAlistair
Fair points but I may have a slightly different perspective since I worked directly with him while at AOL myself. Frank’s contributions towards social media and startups are huge. Yep, he’s all over the country covering events and keeping an eye open for M&A opp’s for AOL. If I’m at AOL I’m going to be pushing Frank out the door to attend as many events as he can. Seems like a good idea for a company like AOL.
You should also check out Alex’s blogwhoredness: http://bit.ly/OcCv2
“The whole project is not what you’d expect to see from AOL. Maybe that is because the product is being led by Alex Bard, the founder and former CEO of Goowy…:
You should know that Alex Bard had nothing to do with getting this up. While it is true that Socialthing is under his team now, this was developed by engineers within the AIM team itself. Don’t give credit to Alex. This is a good chance to show what AIM engineers are capable of doing when not hamstrung by management.
I just wish for my old Aol back sigh.. nothing more nothing less.. It is boring boring boring with the way everything is now. I am so disenterested in Bebo or Aim facebook , my space. Im sorry has got nothing on the way Aol was. : (.. please bring back the aol we all loved and I might add USED.
thanks for listening
lou910