San Francisco — AOL’s recently created Products and Technologies Group today rolled out their enhanced version of AOL Web Mail product, a plug-in architecture that allows users one-click access to GMail and Yahoo Mail in-boxes and a variety of third-party sites and destinations directly from the AOL Web Mail page.
Since past year, AOL has contributed more than 30 new features and an assortment of new functionality to Web Mail in an effort to make it more open and attractive to third-party content and to offer more monetization opportunities to advertisers. The new version is being released globally, making it available in more than 38 countries and locales around the world.
“Web Mail is an essential part of the AOL experience and at the heart of our product offerings,” said Ted Cahall, President, AOL Products and Technologies. “With this new release, we can display the important role AOL products continue to play in the company. Enhancing products that already attract a large, engaged audience is a key goal for our organization.”
In addition to the plug-ins for external mail accounts, the second largest free email service has also been updated for faster performance, over 45 new customization themes, and calendar and address syncing with mobile devices including BlackBerry and the Apple iPhone.
There are some additional features in the lineup that include: Stock price and news reading widgets, an AIM instant messenger widget (which makes a lot of sense), AOL Radio, and so on. This suggests that you can now use AOL Mail to keep tabs on messages coming at you from other sources, which could be sort of cool.
Important Key Characteristics of AOL’s new Web Mail product includes:
- Access to Third-Party E-mail Accounts: The external mail plug-ins allow users to preview Yahoo! Mail and Gmail within the AOL Web Mail experience, as well as take advantage of one-click access to Yahoo! Mail and Gmail.
- Faster Performance: Using updated technologies, AOL has augmented the speed and performance of its Web Mail experience, and enhanced the user interface to make it more intuitive.
- Themed Skins: More than 45 new “skins” or themes let users personalize their page, and offer advertisers the ability to work with AOL to create themes that will appeal to key audiences.
- Plug-in Gallery: Users can customize their Web Mail page by choosing from a variety of new plug-ins offering one-click access to favorite sites, content, Gmail and Yahoo! Mail. The Gallery also allows access to all of the AOL gadgets currently stored in the myAOL Gallery. In addition, AOL is inviting third-party developers to create new gadgets for Web Mail via http://dev.aol.com.
“People who are using AOL Mail represent an already-engaged audience,” said Rich Landsman, Senior Vice President, AOL Mail. “As we continue to extend our capabilities far beyond sending and receiving mail, we are challenging ourselves and third-party developers everywhere to create new opportunities for delivering customized, relevant content using our mail platform.”
The company claims that on the whole, AOL Mail has solidified its position as the second most-popular free e-mail service in 2008 with more than 48 million users — an increase of almost 4 million users over the course of the year. Unique visitors to the web mail services, mail.aol.com and AIM mail users saw a 27 percent increase in unique visitors. Page views were up 21 percent in 2008, according to comScore.
Today’s announcement marks the first release from the AOL Product and Technologies Group, created as one of the final steps in AOL’s transformation to an advertising-supported business.
The new group consists mostly of AOL’s most significant products and platforms, including Mail, MapQuest, AOL Search, Truveo video search, and AOL Mobile, as well as the back-end infrastructure supporting many of the company’s products and programming sites.