There’s been a lot of talk the past few days since the launch of the iPhone 3.0 software about the lack of Push Notification apps in the App Store. Well, today brings a big one: AOL Instant Messenger (AIM).
Instant messaging apps are perhaps the perfect use for Push Notification, which allows you to use such services without requiring that they be open at all time. In our test of the pre-release beta version of the AIM app with Push, the messages were sent almost instantaneously. In testing it out right now, it looks to be just as fast.
Earlier today, Apple sent out an email (embedded below) to developers who are testing the latest iPhone 3.0 software, asking them to help do one final stress test the new Push Notification service. The app picked for this test was AOL’s AIM instant messaging application, which makes sense given that IM apps are likely to be the apps that end up using Push Notification the most.
Push Notification, for those who haven’t been following news about it for the past year, is the system Apple developed to alleviate the fact that it won’t allow third party apps to run in the background of the iPhone. Apple claims there are security concerns, battery life concerns and performance concerns that prevent background apps from being feasible at this time on the iPhone (though the company is considering ways to do background apps in the future). Instead, it has asked developers to use its servers to push out certain tasks (like IMs) that come to your phone even when that application isn’t running.
While there may still be a lot of confusion surrounding the future of AOL, that didn’t stop the folks in Northern Virginia from recently overhauling their popular AIM instant messaging app for iPhone (and iPod touch).
Available in two tasty flavors, free (”AIM Free”) and paid (”AIM Paid”), AIM 2.0 for iPhone now provides SMS notifications, has location-aware services, and supports multiple accounts (among other updates). It appears as though all of the application updates have been included in both the free and paid versions, with the major (and obvious) difference being the inclusion of ads in the buddy list of the AIM Free app.
AOL’s wildly popular IM program, AIM, has released version 6.0 of its software tonight. When you’re a global giant, you don’t have to lead the state of the art (unless you’re Google) - you can just follow the lead of the best startups that haven’t near the market share you have. That’s especially true of AIM, who has perhaps the ultimate bragging rights regardless: 44.8 million monthly unique visitors, 5 million more than Yahoo! and MSN combined, the company says. Market dominance plus following the lead of innovative smaller players is not a bad strategy, as long as you’re relatively quick about it. Update: I got properly checked in comments on this late night post, the world outside the US uses a variety of other IM programs as well. 
Thanks for reading, everyone else, we do want to do a good job covering markets throughout the world.
AIM 6.0 is built on top of the experimental project AIM Triton. That means that a lot of “value added” features like links to AOL music will be present - perhaps people like that but judging from the screenshot after the fold I can’t imagine using it. Desktop IM should be open source or a loss leader with unobtrusive ads at most. If you are an AIM user who doesn’t like the upgrade and insists on still using AIM anyway see oldversion.com.
AIM is Windows only but does have a new API, which could lead to interesting developments. The absence of interoperability across platforms means that Adium or Trillian are the only real options for heavy IM users, but casual users will have their experience changed by tonight’s upgrade. If you don’t mind a Windows only IM that can’t communicate with other IM platforms, has plenty of advertisements and a number of honestly useful features like mobile integration - then the new AIM could be for you. Highlights of the new version include the following:
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