ICQ Universe also is taking a very public approach. “The essence of this is having users who want to be there.” “We have so many millions of users in our user base, and we really wanted to bring in those who had an interest and not by default make them members,” Gilliam said. It chose to require invitations rather than automatically allowing current 175 million registered ICQ users to join but also created a public site where guests can browse member profiles and request an invitation. ICQ Universe has adopted an invitation-only model for joining. “We have made a major attempt to make it different.” “Social networking is a hot trend in the business, and we believe it will help us get more users and retain existing ones,” said Orey Gilliam, ICQs general manager. Those who join ICQ Universe automatically become members of the ICQ IM service, which has more than 8 million active daily members. Click here to read about Spoke Softwares plans to offer workgroups a hosted version of its applications.ĪOL stands to gain more members of its ICQ service if its foray into social networking is successful. zimages/4/28571.gif Social networking this week also gained more enterprise interest. Microsoft Corp.s Research group also has an internal project called Wallop that includes social networking features, and even Yahoo Inc.s executives have said they are watching social networking developments. in January began experimenting with it through a closely watched project of one of its engineers called Orkut. Through the ICQ Universe site, members can navigate through their interconnected relationships with other members, create public profiles for making connections, and interact with family, friends, colleagues and others in their network, ICQ officials said.ĪOL, of Dulles, Va., is one of the largest Internet companies to jump into social networking, a field first made popular with Friendster Inc. ICQ announced on Thursday its ICQ Universe social networking service that, unlike most social networking sites so far, embeds instant messaging into the services so members can view presence information as well as chat in real time. is moving into the burgeoning social networking field with the launch of a new service from its ICQ instant messaging group.
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