Areas of Partnership
Partnership
Partnerships are an important component of AOL's success in the marketplace. By leveraging our respective strengths, AOL and its partners benefit from higher quality products and services, faster speed to market and broader market reach.
AOL is focusing its partnership efforts in the areas of technology, distribution and access. Each is described in more detail in the following sections.
Technology Partnerships
Technology partnerships typically involve the use of AOL technology in partner products and services. Examples of this include:
- Using AIM Bots (robots) to automate the distribution of information through instant messages to specific communities of interest
- Leveraging AIM protocols and discovery mechanisms to enable providers of compliance and management software to manage AIM message streams
- Development of custom AIM clients
Distribution Partnerships
Distribution partnerships involve the dissemination of AOL content via our AOL products. Content distribution can take a number of forms including custom toolbars and AIM buddy feeds via Lifestream.
Access Partnerships
While AOL may be best known for its access or dial-up business (America Online), it has an important but lesser known access business generally referred to as the Federation. Federation enables third-party private networks to access the AOL instant messaging community. Vendors of instant messaging solutions for business have found partnership with AOL to be particularly valuable in helping them to market their products.
Benefits of Partnership
- Participation in one of the largest online communities on the internet
- Access to API's, documentation and knowledge bases.
- Partner Support