Kathleen Gilroy has a very interesting post on AOL’s new offering: AIM Pages.

Kathleen points to an article by David Card: AOL Building Out IM as Community Platform.

There are two things that are interesting about this:

First, AOL is using what they call “Snaggable” modules. I have written about this concept earlier. I called then AJAX Badges. The idea is to build web pages from widgets that are served up from multiple servers. Here’s how David describes these tools:

But like I said, the best hook may be “snaggable” modules. AOL’s version of widgets (little applets that are essentially a user interface on top of an RSS feed) are AIM Page modules. But unlike Yahoo’s and Apple’s, they aren’t meant to live on your desktop. Like Microsoft Gadgets, they’re designed to be housed on a page. But they’re also meant to be super-subscribe-able, syndicate-able, even paste-able (Think YouTube or Flickr vis a vis MySpace). They’re very lightweight and rendered by browsers.

One of the most interesting things about these interactive widgets is their ability to disturb the importance of a home page. Who cares if you host your home page on WordPress or TypePad if what really matters in the interactive widgets you have dropped into that page.

I’m looking forward to the first interactive widget based game.

Second, AOL has realized that instant messaging and Blogs and Web 2.0 tools like social networks are simply part of the same communication continuum.

AOL is using AIM as a launching pad for their social network.

The insight is simple. Blogs, instant messaging, and email are all simply communication tools. Inside a large company, if you want to improve internal communication, you need to leverage each one of these tools.

The Connection with Web Office

If you want to improve internal communication, if you want to turn your company into an organization that produces emergent intelligence and if you want to generate a constant stream of innovations, you need to leverage every tool on the communication continuum.

AOL’s AIM pages are a good example of how those technologies are going to be brought together.

For more on how these tools will be used by large companies, check out The Next Wave in Productivity Tools - Web Office