AOL Does Social Networking

its homepage as part of a major overhaul that kicked off last month to open up its site to outside services.

Users can now log into Facebook, MySpace and AIM, and post updates without leaving AOL.  Bebo and Twitter also have widgets, but access to those services is not yet available.

You can also now send one update to all of the networks at once through a single status update toolbar, and an RSS reader at the bottom of the page lets you centralize all of your news on AOL.

AOL added outside e-mail access to the page in September, including Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail as a first step in its attempt to become a one-stop-shop that will hopefully attract advertisers. 

And that month year-over-year page views to AOL.com grew 34%, unique visitors were up 12%, total visits were up 15% and total minutes were up 40%, according to comScore.

It says there are new opportunities for ads such as customized wallpapers, but will this shiny new makeover be enough to reel Yahoo in to finally seal a deal?

By Chris Snyder for Wired.com