It works like this: add Socialthing for Websites to your website, and you get a simple navigation bar at the bottom of the page. Through this interface, your visitors get a unified sign-on, the ability to chat and send instant messages with their friends, as well as syndication of data from other social networks (AOL's own Bebo, as well as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and others). Privacy is guaranteed, since users can choose which activities from the site (comments, for example) they want to share with others.
AOL has been testing Socialthing for Websites on The Boot; the service is already live there, and you can try it out.
The big question here is: why would you, as a publisher, want to add Socialthing on your website? AOL gives you several reasons. First, it gives you several interesting instantly available features: chat rooms and instant messaging might (or might not, it depends) attract visitors to your site. Secondly, maybe, for some reason, you don't like Facebook Connect. Most importantly, you can insert your own content into the user feeds, which means your message gets more visibility.