AOL to buy tie-ins to Facebook social networking apps

After dangling cash in developers' faces around AIM applications, AOL today unveiled a financial incentive program for tweaking Facebook and Bebo social networking widgets to work with AOL's Platform-A. Could Google devs be next?

Unlike the AIM Money program announced June 10, which is broader based, the initiative rolled out by AOL this week is specifically directed at Facebook and Bebo developers.

In a statement, AOL said the move is meant to help advertisers "add fresh inventory to their media mix" by placing ads inside widgets and other applications available via AOL's Widgnet network.

In December, AOL unveiled a "Widgnet services program" designed to entice developers of interactive games, photo manipulation applications, stock quote generators, and other social networking tools to tie their applications into Platform-A.

In today's announcement, AOL is now promising Bebo and Facebook developers guaranteed CPM (cost per thousand) rates which will "apply to the first three impressions for each unique US visitor who visits an approved developer's application."

AOL estimates that more than 4,000 widgets and other applications are now available to users on the Bebo site. Last December, in a bid to take on Google's competing OpenSocial platform, Bebo opened an API platform that allows developers to integrate their Facebook applications on the Bebo Web site. Then, in March, AOL acquired Bebo for $850 million.

Bebo now plans to integrate with Google's OpenSocial over the next few months, according to the statement issued by AOL today. But could AOL really be serious about the seemingly unlikely prospect of luring Google open source developers to the AOL ad platform?

Meanwhile, content posted on AOL's Widgnet site is urging advertisers to combine the "superior optimization and targeting technologies" of AOL's Advertising.com with ads placed inside Widgnet widgets.

Case studies on the Widgnet site talk about how Advertising.com has boosted customers' conversions of clicks to actual sales -- sometimes through ads meant to drive Web visitors back to a site, even after they've already abandoned their shopping carts, exited the site, and tried to head elsewhere on the Web.