AIM Blast Kicks Chat Up a Notch

For the people who need to get a message out to a whole group of people at once, AOL Instant Messenger has just come out with AIM Blast to reach whomever you need, in bulk and without a separate chat room.

Perfect for family, co-workers or a large entourage, you can set up and edit groups via blast.aim.com. AOL says this works with third-party AIM clients but those who use Meebo may have some problems.

To get started, group participants will get invited via IM and they can accept or decline from there. To keep track of everyone, individual screen names appear before their messages. You can either set chat dynamics as well by letting every one chat together or read-only with messages coming only from you.

That kind of deflates a little of the sense of chat community, but I guess, in some people's opinion, there are those who are better off reading and not participating.