Don’t expect AOL to be LOL over Facebook’s new push into instant messaging.
Time Warner’s struggling online unit could be the big loser if the surging social networking service’s new chat feature, now in the midst of a slow rollout, takes off with its estimated 32 million US users, analysts warn.
“From an AOL perspective, we fear that Facebook users will become addicted to Facebook chat and begin to decrease their usage of AIM,” Pali Capital analyst Richard Greenfield said in a note to investors yesterday.
“Facebook has already proven quite adept at (easily) enabling users to import contacts from other applications, such as AIM.”
AOL already offers an AIM widget through Facebook, but it isn’t as slickly integrated into the social network’s site as Facebook’s own new live chat offering, which could put it at a competitive disadvantage.
Gartner analyst Andrew Frank said that Facebook isn’t the only threat facing AIM. MySpace – which is owned by News Corp., publisher of The Post – is moving into IM too. And services like Twitter are also gaining in popularity.
Greenfield points out that while AIM is not the most important revenue component of AOL, it delivers big usage and engagement numbers. He estimates that AOL has over 40 million AIM users in the US.
The situation highlights the challenges portals face as they try to match social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace in terms of so called “stickiness” with users in terms of time spent on their sites.
AOL last month moved to address the issue with its $850 million acquisition of social network Bebo.