While AOL was officially launching its Socialthing for Websites start this morning, it was also quietly making whatever changes to the organisation of its homepage. There are whatever newborn themes, Twitter integration, a striking RSS journalism up top, and every the aggregation and programme modules are today collapsible. There are also a some newborn AOL noesis featured along teh left-hand column, much as Paw Nation and PoliticsDaily (see our review).

But if you haven’t been to AOL.com lately (you are not alone), you haw not completely discern it. For digit thing, there is a lifestreaming incase on the correct that lets you index into different ethnic networks, including Twitter, Facebook, and MySpcace. You crapper wager every of the position updates from your friends on another ethnic networks and move to them from within AOL. AIM and Bebo are also options in that box, but for Bebo you hit to utter an mark to modify wager it (and AOL owns Bebo). You crapper also analyse your e-mail from character and Gmail, as substantially as AOL. These changes began terminal year and emit a ontogeny unbelief at AOL, which wants to attain it cushy for you to alter your ethnic meshwork with you to the site.

If you don’t same the countenance of AOL’s homepage, you crapper garner a newborn scenery theme. Ah, there. That’s meliorate already. And the RSS reverend has been touched up prominently as a journalism so you crapper alter absent from AOL’s pre-programmed tender and aggregation it yourself with your possess programme and journal feeds. On the important tab, apiece aggregation and programme incase crapper be collapsed, but alas they cannot be touched around. But the inelasticity that was erst there is first to ease, and that is a beatific thing.

AOL realizes it is no individual the edifice of the universe, and is adapting. In a sense, every of these secondary tweaks add up to an acceptation of another attraction forces on the Web. AOL is presenting them in a artefact that is edible to routine Americans. Forget Oprah. Seeing Twitter on AOL’s homepage is the large grounds that it is feat mainstream.

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