AOL completes take-over of Bebo

AOL completed its acquisition of social networking site Bebo today. You may remember that AOL announced it would buy Bebo for $850 million back in March. According to InformationWeek Bebo will be the center of AOL's new People Network business unit. Heading up this business unit is Joanna Shields who will serve as president. This "People Network" will consist of three AOL services: AIM, ICQ, and now Bebo.
While Bebo is most popular in the UK, Ireland, and New Zealand, AOL is hoping grow this upcoming social network in the US. Silicon Alley Insider seems to think AOL will layoff employees working in the AIM/ICQ division due to the restructuring process.
What do you think? Did AOL make a good decision? Do you think this acquisition puts AIM at risk? Be sure to voice your opinion in the comments!
[Via: InformationWeek ]
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AOL gives out $100,000 in prizes to AIM plugin coders

AOL is getting serious about opening up its popular instant messenger application. A few months ago the company launched the Open AIM initiative, making available the APIs and documentation developers need to add AIM features to third party applications or to develop third party plugins for AIM. Now AOL, which happens to be this blog's parent company, has announced the winners of a $100,000 design competition. Winning entries included applications that let you:

• Instantly translate messages from one language to another
  
• Preview an URL in an IM by hovering your mouse over it
  
• Manage your RSS feeds from within AIM
  
• Share your desktop with another AIM user
  
• Convert text-based instant messages to speech

Nine winners scored $10,000, while 20 more winners got $500 prizes. You can check out a list of winner and see all the submissions at the TopCoder contest page.

[Via: Download Squad ]
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