Thursday, March 6, 2008

AOL Launches OpenAIM 2.0

AOL announced early Wednesday morning the launch of Open AIM 2.0, a program meant to increase third-party development on the popular instant-messaging app through the release of new SDKs and APIs.

Web-messenger apps meebo and eBuddy have already signed on with Open AIM 2.0, and AOL has announced integration with its forthcoming AIM Money, to debut in April, which will let developers generate income from their apps.

AOL launched the first incarnation of Open AIM back in 2006, before open-source was all the rage with big-name Web companies. This second iteration arrives in the midst of similar open announcements from big guns such as Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Since AOL first launched the program, more than 235,000 developers have signed on to Open AIM.

"Our mission for AIM is to facilitate the world's online, real-time conversations," AOL's senior vice president of social media, messaging and homepages, said in a statement. "To that end, we've come together with third-party chat services such as meebo and eBuddy to enhance the experiences of our users who access the AIM platform from these web-based services. We're also giving developers the tools and flexibility they desire to build innovative and meaningful applications around instant messaging for web users around the globe."

Along with the new release, AOL is making public OSCAR, the proprietary protocol that AIM uses for IM and presence information. According to the company, this new-found openness will "enable developers to build fully-compatible, full-featured and secure AIM services for use on platforms that also host other chat services, both on the desktop and on mobile devices."

AOL is also offering more flexible usage, removing per-day and per-month usage limits, and opening the SDKs and APIs for international usage. Developers can also use the new tools to design enterprise and mobile apps for the chat service.

For more information on Open AIM 2.0, check out AOL's developer page.

Originally published on AppScout.

Brian Heater

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