Gathering participants into a conference call or Web meeting may get a little easier, when America Online launches AIM Business Services this week; it lets users host or join conference calls and Web meetings through the AOL Instant Messenger interface. The first services launched are AIM Voice Conferencing and AIM Web Meetings. They work only with AIM 5.5.
"A very large percentage of AIM sessions end in phone or voice conference," says Edmund J. Fish, AOL senior vice president and general manager of desktop messaging. AOL estimates that 14 million AIM users use AIM at work. Adding voice and Web conferencing to instant messaging provides "presence-aware services that leverage the network of AIM to enable at-work users to maximize the benefits of real-time communication," Fish says.
The Voice Conferencing function is powered by Lightbridge and the Web Meetings component uses technology by WebEx.