The tide is a changing?

In early June Michael Arrington posted about AOL's forthcoming release of a new feed reader, MyAOL Favorites. (Will that be MyAOL Favourites in the UK I wonder?) While the release is still a little way away Michael's TechCrunch posting gave a very upbeat review of the pre-beta version he saw. This is positive stuff!

The TechCrunch column seems to confirm my view of AOL's position. The company has good products but they are just not given credibility in the tech savvy community. The moves in the last year with the developer network here at dev.aol.com have obviously made strides in changing views in the tech community. If you, our extended developer community, continue to focus on building great community products then things can only get better for all of us. The AOL ecosystem may be on the brink of generating much greater technical credibility. This will inevitably be a slow process but AOL's commitment to open standards and publication of APIs that enable developers to leverage the tremendously strong infrastructure capabilities and market presence of AOL should eventually convince people that the changes at AOL are more than skin deep. One thing I have been lucky enough to witness during my time blogging on 2.Open.aol.com is the growing passion for the 2.Open approach amongst the internal team. The internal development community is pushing change. Grass roots change is occuring. I hope you, our developer community, are just as keen to join this push.

What are your thoughts? Do you sense a change in attitude towards AOL products and services? What does AOL have to do to positively influence the wider tech savvy community? Join the discussion. Leave a comment below.