Thanks to AOL, Instant Messaging is now an ecosystem. This morning they announced OpenAIM, effectively a programatization of the OSCAR protocol, AOL’s long-since-reverse-engineered network interface for Instant Messaging. This effectively legitimizes what has become common practice — hacking IM for fun and profit. Both Adium (for OSX) and Meebo use the open-source libpurple library to access the various Instant Messaging networks. At my insistence, EQO implemented this as well.

That AOL is now embracing, rather than oscillating between pretending they don’t see and vaguely threatening to block and/or sue third party developers leveraging and enhancing their Instant Messaging platform is a huge leap forward — both for the third-party developer community and for AOL and AIM themselves. This should not be considered to be a strategic advantage for AOL: I would hope that this should cause YahOo and MSN to follow suit.

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