AIM Gets A Major Makeover
AOL will on Wednesday make available AIM 6.0, bringing the largest instant messaging client up to speed with the rest of the web. It's been a long time coming; version 5.0 of the client was released in July 2002. The new client includes the addition …
Context & Ripple Effects
AIM 6.0 ends a four-year drought: version 5.0 shipped in July 2002, and the client that GigaOM calls the largest in instant messaging has been left behind as the rest of the web caught up. The refresh lands in the middle of AOL's 2006 brand-revival push, which already included turning Netscape.com into a user-submitted news site in June and launching the AIM Pro business messaging offering in July.
The timing is delicate. In August, AOL's release of three months of user search query logs drew researcher interest but also privacy hesitation, compounding reputational pressure on the company's consumer products. A report the same day as this launch that NBC Universal's Randy Falco was in talks for a senior operating role at AOL remains unconfirmed, but underscores how much attention is on AOL's management direction.
First-order effects
- AIM's large installed base gets its first major client upgrade in over four years, closing the feature gap that had opened between the 2002-era client and web-native communication tools.
- AOL now fields two AIM tracks aimed at different audiences: the refreshed consumer client and the AIM Pro business offering launched in July 2006.
Second-order effects
- Rival consumer IM networks face renewed pressure to match a modernized client from the category's largest player rather than coasting on AIM's stagnation.
- AIM Pro's business positioning puts AOL in competition for enterprise messaging attention at the same moment its consumer brand is being rebuilt through moves like the Netscape relaunch.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, legacy desktop messaging clients converge on the feature set of the open web, and differentiation shifts from software polish to network scale and trust — a bar raised by the lingering fallout from AOL's query-log exposure.
- For portal-era brands like AOL, sustained product reinvestment across AIM, Netscape, and business offerings becomes the test of whether a 1990s franchise can remain relevant as usage shifts toward web-based services.
The trend: Legacy desktop instant messaging clients are being dragged up to web-era expectations, with AOL betting a long-overdue AIM overhaul can anchor its broader consumer-brand revival.