Who's your buddy?

New AIM feature draws criticism

from Instant Message users.

NEW YORK - Two new buddies greeted chatters on America Online Inc.'s instant-messaging service this week, but not everyone wanted to be their friend. Some AIM users complained that the buddies amounted to an intrusion.

Normally, users manually add a buddy to the list of contacts with whom they frequently chat. The new buddies — to promote AOL's movies and shopping services — are known as bots.
The two join other AIM bots, such as those for news and baseball scores, but this was the first time AOL added them automatically when users logged on, said AOL spokeswoman Krista Thomas