Open Services Buds

An interim developer.aol.com is live (first update in yeeeeears), and an updated Open AIM SDK was recently posted. Greenhouse is also public now, and should see some interesting activity in short order - it'll be less, uh, lame than you think :) (inside joke, sorry). And our first (internal) Open Services Developer's conference is in the coming week - the coming few months should see the release of some reference applications and services publicly.

So we're seeing the first few little buds...

Open Services at AOL is really about a methodology (and mindset) shift, as much if not much more than a technology and implementation change - though there's some of that, too. I thought I might outline in near-future posts some of the core principles of the Web eco-system this implies - from a developer's perspective, especially as it regards to AOL and the value (question: is there value in scale in Web 2.0 world?) of scale.

(hint: I think so, but probably not in the usual way)

The core idea, of course, is this: Be the soil, not the plant. Or perhaps, more directly, there's more aggregate value in the farm, than in any crop - though that's much less mellifluous.

But what does that really mean? Thus far, AOL hasn't embraced what it implies...