Jon Fine at Business Week is revealing sourced information about AOL developing social software atop its AIM instant messaging platform. No hard news here, but plenty of speculation about whether AOL can effectively compete with MySpace, or at least earn a sliver of the expanding pie. Fine notes that MySpace thrives on loose rules that allow its hoardes of teen users to customize the experience and use the service to escape the dicta of their offline lives. AOL, claims the article, is too rule-bound to mimic such an atmosphere. Well, AOL's lineage comes directly from offering pure space for the swarming underground masses. But it's true that the contemporary version of AOL is more family-oriented. Perhaps that will be the competitive distinction giving AIM-Space (fictitious name, of course) some traction. Parents are just getting up to speed with the MySpace culture, and not particularly liking what they see.

The real competitive advantage, though, will be the collosal user base of AIM. Building online community on the broad shoulders of a major IM platform isn't a new idea, but neither has it acheived respectable fruition.