Leading US ISP plans to allow its online messaging users to use the service with friends and colleagues through their microsoft outlook address book.

US Internet service provider America Online announced today that the company plans to update its instant messaging service so that users will be able to see when friends and business associates are online, even if they're not on the contact list.

The company plans to let users connect to its AOL Instant Messenger software  (AIM) with the address book of their Microsoft Outlook program in a deal with a third-party company, Intellisync.

Executives of the online division of Time Warner said that the new service plans to release software that lets AIM users know when a contact within their Microsoft Outlook program is online and reachable by AIM automatically.

The move today by the world's largest online service is another of the company’s tactics to spread its presence across the Web in an aggressive strategy to reverse a historic aversion to giving away anything for free.

Chamath Palihapitiya, vice president and general manager of AIM said, "AIM is everywhere consumers are. We want to take it to where they are."

Such statements concerning AOL products were widespread a few years ago, when AOL's dial-up service was on top of the market and its inflated public equity enabled it to snatch the world's largest media company, Time Warner.

But with millions of users fleeing to cheaper rivals and faster connections from cable and telephone companies, AOL is hoping to provide as much of its once proprietary programming and services to free Web sites, including its own AOL.com.

It is hoping to replace dwindling subscription revenue with online advertising revenue, a sector of the media economy that is expected to rise by more than 20 per cent this year.