AMERICA ONLINE AND MACROMEDIA PARTNER TO ENABLE NEW BREED OF APPLICATIONS INCORPORATING INSTANT MESSAGING
Partnership gives developers ability to create Macromedia Central applications with seamless AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and ICQ presence and other instant messaging features
Macromedia MAX 2003—Salt Lake City—November 19, 2003— Macromedia, Inc. (Nasdaq: MACR) and America Online, Inc. today announced a strategic partnership that builds on the promise of Macromedia Central and the power of the AOL Instant Messenger (AIM and ICQ) platforms. Central is a new Macromedia offering that enables people to interact with distributed information in a more meaningful and relevant way. This partnership opens the door for hundreds of thousands of Macromedia Flash developers to build applications that take advantage of presence and other instant messaging features found in the AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ services.
With the partnership, both companies will work together to integrate the features and functionality of the America Online Presence and Instant Messaging SDK into Macromedia Central. Under terms of the licensing agreement, the SDK will be made available to Macromedia Central developers and will contain application programming interfaces (APIs) and development tools for the AOL Instant Messenger platform, allowing developers, for the first time ever, to seamlessly integrate these powerful capabilities directly into their business or consumer desktop applications.
America Online, Inc.'s instant messaging network supports over a billion messages a day and supports over 50 million active users each month. The SDK is expected to be available early next year. Also part of this agreement, America Online will promote Macromedia Central on the AIM client, which will enable all AIM users to install the application from their desktops.
"Our relationship with America Online provides a wonderful foundation for Central developers to build a wide variety of presence-enabled, social applications for AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ with the great user experience and responsiveness of Macromedia Flash," said Kevin Lynch, chief software architect, Macromedia. "This partnership opens the door for developers to build applications that add context through online forums such as discussion groups, virtual classrooms, and multi-party chat."
"Macromedia Central is defining a new way for users to intelligently interact with information, and we're excited that the Macromedia developer community will have the ability to combine this powerful capability with the real-time communications capabilities pioneered by AIM and ICQ," said Edmund Fish, senior vice president and general manager, AOL Desktop Messaging. "Instant messaging isn't just a 'killer app' for the Internet, it's also a set of capabilities, such as online presence, that can dramatically enhance many business and consumer software experiences. We've taken the step of putting these capabilities into an easy to use software developer's kit so that, together with the flexibility and richness of Macromedia Central, developers will have a whole new way to bring richness to group interaction and online communication."
By providing context outside the browser, Macromedia Central will enable a more responsive, immediate, and convenient way to interact with information needed on a regular basis. Regardless of whether users are online or off, Central allows them to access, filter, and interpret content and share data across applications in meaningful ways. Macromedia today announced the availability of a developer edition of Macromedia Central (announced today, see separate release). For more information on Macromedia, visit www.macromedia.com/go/central.
America Online, Inc.'s instant messaging services include the world leading AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and ICQ ("I Seek You") messaging services, and Enterprise AIM Service, a suite of business class solutions that increase the value and manageability of instant messaging in the workplace. The AOL Buddy List â feature, established in 1996, allows those using the AOL Service, AIM, and Enterprise AIM Services to immediately see when family, friends, colleagues, and other contacts are online and available to exchange instant messages.
ABOUT AMERICA ONLINE, INC.
America Online, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. Based in Dulles , Virginia , America Online is the world's leader in interactive services, web brands, Internet technologies and e-commerce services.
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