Whew!  At least I can legally say what the name is!  That’s been an embargo for almost two months now - as the code-name AIMspace leaked out in late January in Businessweek.

So now starts the next phase - testing.

So thanks to everyone for their interest, this IS a big story and REALLY big play and a disruption in the force - as we know it.  Whenever a giant dinosaur changes its direction, attitude and strategy - it effects us all.  And AOL is getting a clue, a major clue - almost in real-time. 

The ramifications of how this will effect things - will unfold over the next few months.  Certainly by the end of the year we’ll see if MySpaces supposed ‘inpenetrateable’ armor can be cracked.

From my vantage point - all I see are the features that DIDN’T make it into this rev.  I see a year’s worth of work ahead of us and LOTS of great people to do that work.  The trick will be to get a decent feedback loop setup between the developers and decision makers and the end-users - to make sure that everyone gets what they want.

Having a large company be responsive, relevant and open is a victory for the Cluetrain, open standards and the blogosphere.  This is a direct response to the efforts at Yahoo to open up and can be credited with starting with AOL’s Live8 promo last summer (which they won an Emmy for - BTW.)

See how these battling dinosaurs effect us?  Yahoo is buying up companies, hiring people and setting new levels of openness.  Well now we got AOL doing the same!

Now we just need them to one up each other!

So be to clear - this is not a launch, but just the beginning of testing.  But it IS AOL, and it IS based upon working with AIM and they ARE Time-Warner, so………

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