MySpace and AOL Battle Intensifies

Posted on May 9, 2006

We raised this question before but it now looks like MySpace is really going to make an attempt at being an AOL IM Killer. Kareem Mayan, who works for Fox Interactive, announced the launch of MySpace IM earlier today. Tom is your first MySpace IM friend just like he is on MySpace.com.

It's a really simple, clean-looking implementation that feels very solid and exposes the right level of functionality up front.
Tom is the only default contact that you have when you first install the client. There is a prominent "Add your friends to IM" link on the client that takes you to a page that lets you add your MySpace friends to IM with one click.
The client retains your chat history (as you can see in the below chat with Tom), and has a big ol' box that sets your away message.
The only bug I noticed was that my MySpace image doesn't show up, likely because it's a gif. They're working on that, though.

MySpace IM is currently in beta mode. Mashable reports that AOL will be fighting back with AIM Pages. Mashable points to this screenshot of a sample AIM Pages profile that was released today. You can zoom in on it using Flickr's tools. The AIM Pages profile screenshot is for Chuck's Chatty Spot (he's a mammal that likes gummi bears) and it contains a future date of 6/12/06.

Update 5-10-06: TechCrunch has screenshots of AIM pages which debuted today.