Ted breaks down the “AOL launching MySpace killer” meme perfectly. We’re not killing MySpace, we’re opening up our services and enabling the original buddy system: the AIM buddy list!

In our industry one service rarely kills another: GMAIL didn’t kill Hotmail, Yahoo IM didn’t kill AIM, Google Finance hasn’t killed Yahoo Finance, etc, etc, etc. In fact, as time goes on the success of web services becomes more and more based on interoperability, not annihilation. Why shouldn’t users be able to use AIM for IM, GMAIL for email, MySpace for their personal page, Blogsmith for their blog, Linked in for business networking, and Finance.Yahoo.com if they like? That’s what I do!

[ Editor's Note: Ironically, while all this AOL vs. MySpace stuff was brewing I was having drinks with Chris DeWolf, the co-founder of MySpace. ]