AIM Calls On Cell Phones
Not surprisingly, AOL is taking a page from Yahoo and working on setting up their AIM instant messaging software to send SMS messages to mobile phones, even if the users aren’t signed up for AIM service. While it’s a little amusing to see this sort of “reverse cross-platform” move from AOL since they’ve been so vehemently against letting any other instant messaging software work with AIM, it does make sense in the long run. As we discussed earlier, in the US, regular instant messaging is many times more popular than text messaging – and part of the reason why SMS text messaging has been slower to catch on here is that it doesn’t work with existing IM clients. Adding these capabilities is a reasonable next step (though, the most obvious step of coming up with a single standard for IM still seems far away).
