America Online is launching yet another new version of its popular AOL Instant Messenger application with a new, impressive-sounding name: AIM Triton. In the past, this wouldn't even have been worth a
brief mention, but this time there are some serious improvements in the offing. Among them, voice-over-Internet Protocol functionality, an address book, and more and bigger links to AOL's Web pages
and services such as AOL Radio. The company's strategy is to use the popular application, which has far greater penetration than AOL's Web portal itself, to drive more traffic to the company's other
properties, thereby growing its audience organically. Analysts, however, worry that AOL runs the risk of alienating its customers by cramming too much stuff into what is, at its core, a messaging
platform. For years, AOL's Instant Messenger has been the Time Warner unit's most consistently popular application, but the company never figured out how to make any money off the free app. It has
certainly tried, though, by licensing the technology to large corporations, selling banner ads, charging software vendors for the right to push products in users' buddy lists, selling virtual "buddy
icons," offering enhanced smiley faces to AOL subscribers only, etc. None of these tactics have proved to be effective money-makers.
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