AOL’s New VoIP Strategy

News of the end of AOL’s Total Talk service is the hot topic in the VoIP blogosphere today. Andy Abramson wrote an excellent piece on the news, complementing AOL on the decision to drop Phone 1.0 and move to Phone 2.0. The story was first brought to my attention by a post Aswath Rao wrote after a discovering a link on Alec’s Digg list. After reading all of the posts surrounding this news, I think AOL has done the right thing and focused it’s efforts on leveraging the one thing that almost every single person I know uses almost every single day to get into and succeed in the VoIP market; AOL INSTANT MESSENGER (AIM). Consumers love things that they are familiar with. Consumers are familiar with AIM. Kids love it. Start them using VoIP at an early age. Make talking to your friends using VoIP cool - the subscribers will come -