Is AOL Building A MySpace Killer?

The blogosphere this week was abuzz on rumors that AOL was close to launching a social network that would take on the popular MySpace.

The chitchat started with software developer Dave Winer reporting Wednesday on his Scripting News blog that he had heard a rumor that AOL, which officially changed its name from America Online, would challenge MySpace "head on" in about two weeks.

Winer is the author or co-author of several Web technology standards, such as SOAP, RSS and OPML.

AOL neither confirmed nor denied the rumor.

"We are working on something in this space, as has been previously reported, but we don't have any new news to share," spokeswoman Anne Bentley said in an email.

The blogosphere has been waiting for a potential MySpace-killer from AOL since January, when BusinessWeek magazine reported that AOL was getting ready to launch a platform off of its AOL Instant Messenger service that would make it easier for subscribers to share and create content. Internally, the project is known as "AIMspace," the magazine said. AOL claims to have 43 million users of its instant messaging service.