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So according to Mediaweek, AOL has finally released AOL Journals, their formerly internet access subscriber only blogging tool, to the general AIM member public. Past AIM, this is really the only core service AOL has released to general internet surfers without requiring the payment for Internet Access.

In my opinion, this shows that AOL believes that Blogging is as big or even bigger of an opportunity than IM, and highlights one of their points of differentiation in the blogosphere as moblogging. Moblogging is a very powerfull application and has been a staple of subscription generating premium services such as Blogware.

A basic tool from what I have seen past the moblogging and AIM integration which you would expect from a free offering, but no advertising yet so it will be interesting to see how they propose to monetize this offering as opposed to the “me too” nature of this launch after the Microsoft Spaces, Google Blogger, and Yahoo 360 entries into this market.

 What an article, they even copied the chronological structure of a blog for the print! Could this be the future of all hard copy layouts? Maybe not, but what they believe is that if you are a business, and you are not blogging in some way shape or form, you will have a very difficult time competing online.

While the traditional web catalogues what we have learned, the blogs track what's on our minds.

“I'm amazed people don't get it yet,” says Jeff Weiner, senior vice-president who heads up search, “Never in the histroy of market research has there been a tool like this”

Definitely worth more than a read.. maybe even your first blog post… They did…