The Inquisitr » aol

AOL rebranding to “Aol,” that should fix it

Kim LaCapria — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:02:04 +0000

In other news, AOL is still around.

AOL announced rebranding plans sunday, losing the all-caps “AOL” and changing the brand’s name to the much catchier and sensical “Aol.” (Owl? Awl?) Along with the new pronunciation being rolled out by the net-dinosaur, AOL is changing the look of its logo, too.

Gone is the little circle in a triangle you may remember from a shower of free disks and CDs in the late 90s. Aol is taking the risky move of not committing to a single image or palette of colors, settling on a rotation of goldfish, flowers, a squiggle and other random items meant to convey… well, that’s not exactly clear. AOL says the visual marketing is “one consistent logo with countless ways to reveal.”

One thing that seems to be missing from the rebranding effort is content. Upon seeing news of the rebrand today, I knocked around the old AOL site a bit and found it to be exactly as watered down and clunky as it was the last time I was exposed to it, at work a few years ago. If AOL is banking solely on keeping the users who are afraid of an internet unfiltered by AOL and the really, really habitual, no amount of goldfish or prop-rockers can save it. A nebulous statement made in the rebranding press-release seems to indicate that not much is going to change there:

“Our new identity is uniquely dynamic. Our business is focused on creating world-class experiences for consumers and AOL is centered on creative and talented people – employees, partners, and advertisers. We have a clear strategy that we are passionate about and we plan on standing behind the AOL brand as we take the company into the next decade,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AOL.

Still not getting it? Me neither, but you can watch the video that accompanied the press release below:

AOL Loses Serious Bet, Launches New Joke Logos

Duncan Riley — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:21:44 +0000

AOL today has launched a “new brand identity for its future as an independent company” that includes among other things the letters AOL superimposed on a fish.

In what has to be an April fools day joke seriously late, or the loss of a serious bet, AOL is now Aol. (that’s not the end of a sentence, it’s actually “Aol.”) with the very basic type face (anyone for Arial) superimposed on a variety of images.

The images include a gold fish (as mentioned,) a devil/ gnarly hand gesture, some sort of swirling thing that looks like it was designed in MS Paint, something purple that may be fish eggs (is caviar bright purple??), some sort of possessed head come LSD trip, and last but not least (and bringing home the joke) a squiggle.

According to an AOL press release, the new logo(s) are simple, confident logotype, revealed by ever-changing images that are a “consistent logo with countless ways to reveal.” Yeah, if you think that sounds like drugs at play, you’re not the only one thinking that.

The new logo(s) will be rolled out across AOL (sorry, Aol.) properties December 10.

What do you think? Is this someone’s idea of a bad joke, or are we being too harsh? let us know in the comments.

AOL to sell off ICQ

Steven Hodson — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:41:31 +0000

I don’t think there is a person on the net today who has been online for more that 10 or 15 years who doesn’t hold up their low number count ICQ ID as some sort of badge. While I can’t remember my ID number I do remember that it was one of the first programs I downloaded when I started using the web.

Well as being reported by Kara Swisher it seems that AOL has decided that the time has come to get rid of this once proud jewel that it paid $287 million in 1998. While ICQ may seem so old school in the day and age of social media, Twitter and Facebook it is still apparently profitable.

While ICQ may live in the shadow of Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo in the States it is a different matter in Europe where it is number one in Germany, Russia and Ukraine as well as Israel and other smaller countries.

Apparently it is due to interest in ICQ by two major non-US companies that has prompted AOL to hire Morgan Stanley and Allen & Co to handle any deals regard the possible sale of the company once AOL’s spin-off from TimeWarner.

AOL acquires MMAFighting.com

Duncan Riley — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:11:13 +0000

AOL has acquired MMA news portal MMAFighting.com, with the site to be merged into its Fanhouse sports network.

MMAFighting.com covers the increasing popular sport of mixed martial arts, and includes a mix of blog like news elements, sport rankings, pictures and video. The site has an Alexa rank of 52,454 and does monthly traffic in the 800,000 to 1 million page view range according to direct measure stats on Quantcast.

Marty Moe, SVP for AOL Money & Finance told Paid Content that while AOL was enthusiastic about the acquisition, the buy was not a signal of a wider plan to acquire sites for AOL for the sake of it, contrary to speculation. “We are head-long in the content publishing business, we’re actively looking at what other opportunities might work for our sites” Moe said. “We’re taking a category by category approach to acquisitions and we’re actively engaged in exploiting market opportunities.”

The price of the acquisition was not disclosed, although AOL did say that it intended to retain most of the sites writers.

AOL shuts CompuServe. In related news, CompuServe was still alive

Duncan Riley — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 03:30:34 +0000

AOL has shut CompuServe, the first major commercial online service in the United States.

The company had its origins in 1969 and started offering limited dial-in services in the mid-1970’s. The year it first offered “online services” was 1979, and by the by the mid-1980s CompuServe was one of the largest information and networking services companies in existence, and it was the largest consumer information service in the world.

CompuServe remained popular as a stand alone service until the mid-1990’s, when the rise of the World Wide Web and widespread internet access slowly killed its core business. An attempt in 1995 to offer users internet access along with CompuServe services failed by 1997, despite the company being the first to offer fixed rate monthly access for the service. Having been owned by H&R Block since the early 80’s, Compuserve changed hands several times until eventually ending up at AOL by the end of the 1990’s.

At AOL, CompuServe became nothing more than a not well loved subsidiary (AOL having been CompuServe’s biggest competitor for many years), until finally all but fading away.

Basex notes that CompuServe users will be able to use their existing CompuServe Classic (as the service was renamed) addresses at no charge via a new e-mail system, but the software that the service was built on, along with all the features supported by that software has been shut down.

Q: What browser do you use? – A: Google [VIDEO]

Steven Hodson — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 23:08:08 +0000

I have to give big props to the guys over at TheNextWeb.com for finding this gem of a video – oh and the headline it’s actually from the video and their answer wasn’t Google Chrome. It was just – Google.

While the Zee might have been surprised by some of the answers from the people on the street I’m not. the fact that the majority of people thought Google, Yahoo were browsers doesn’t surprise me one bit. Heck there was even one diehard “AOL is the web” guy. Rather than spoil it any further take the 2 – 3 minutes it takes and watch the video. It’s a great way to end a Friday.

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AOL makes a hyperlocal play, acquires Going and Patch

Duncan Riley — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:10:28 +0000

AOL has announced that it has acquired hyperlocal news service Patch and social events site Going. Both acquisitions offer local news and events, with a strong emphasis on user generated content.

Of the two acquisitions, Going would seem the more natural fit. Established in 2006 with $5 million in funding from Highland Capital Partners
and General Catalyst Partners, Going is an Eventbrite of sorts specific to nightlife. Users or businesses publish their events to the site, and other users can comment, upload photos, or even arrange to meet people there.

Patch is the interesting acquisition in terms of the direction it might take AOL in. The site, founded in 2007 by a range of tech investors and ex-media people (including AOL chief Tim Armstrong), is a pure hyperlocal play offering news portals by suburb/ small city area. The company though is surprisingly top heavy in staff, at least relative to the traffic it is currently delivering, which is so small it barely registers on major stat sites. AOL would offer strong cross promotion opportunities that might help grow the site, but many have failed in this space before.

The price of the acquisitions was not disclosed.

Going

Patch

Time Warner announces AOL split as revenue plunges

Duncan Riley — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 01:12:38 +0000

Time Warner has announced that it will spin off AOL, on the same day as reporting a big plunge in revenue in the troubled division.

Time Warner has made an initial filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it intends to spin off AOL, although notes that no final decision has been made. Time Warner said in a statement “Although the Company’s Board of Directors has not made any decision…the Company currently anticipates that it would initiate a process to spin off one or more parts of the businesses of AOL to Time Warner’s stockholders, in one or a series of transactions.”

Revenue at AOL dropped 23% in the first quarter of 2009, off the back of a 20% fall in advertising, and a 27% drop in its fading internet access business. Cost cutting did not match the decline, although AOL still managed to report a $150 million profit after before Depreciation and Amortization, a drop of 47% over the same quarter in 2008.

AOL cuts 700, including Weblogs Inc lifestyle blogs

Duncan Riley — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 23:19:47 +0000

AOL will fire 700 employees according to a memo sent to all staff by CEO Randy Falco today.

Included in the cuts is a freeze on “merit” pay rises for 2009.

Among the cuts is also said to be the Weblogs Inc lifestyle blogs, according to a report from ReadWriteWeb.

Sites to go include Aisle Dash, Gadling, Green Daily, Luxist, ParentDish, Slashfood, DIY Life, StyleList and That’s Fit. The RWW report suggests that the sites might be relaunched later as magazine style sites.

The move to cut more Weblogs Inc sites comes despite promises from the company that previous cuts were the final ones, and that the network was thriving, and expanding. I guess like most things coming from AOL, a pinch of salt is always required. While many of the writers will pick up new gigs, what I’ve been hearing from many in the market at the moment is reasonable paying blogging jobs are drying up, and a flood of newly qualified writers may actually push writing pay rates further down as more scramble for less.

AOL is feature complete says Falco

Steven Hodson — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:41:02 +0000

It’s been a long haul for AOL the Internet brand we all love to hate. It was only 18 months ago that the company set about to rework itself into a more relevant company and while it will always be remembered for its polluting of our mail with those infamous AOL disks it would seem that they have indeed transformed themselves.

In the pas 18 months AOL has launched an advertising platform division called Platform-A, a social media division called People Networks and now with the announcement of MediaGlow they are formalizing their current and future blog publishing as the third leg of their new look. As they posted in their press release on the announcement of MediaGlow

“Our vision was to rebuild AOL into three core businesses — publishing, advertising and social media. With the launch of MediaGlow, we have completed our goal in less than 18 months,” said Randy Falco, Chairman and CEO of AOL. “AOL now efficiently delivers the most relevant and engaging content and is able to uniquely maximize display advertising opportunities for advertisers and publishers across the Web. MediaGlow provides us with the ability to extend our publishing success and puts AOL in a very strong position for the future.”

Source: AOL Press Release

According to the press release the roadmap forward for MediaGlow in 2009 will be the creation of “30 editorially curated site” which I take to mean 30 some niche type blogs will be coming our way this year from the company.

[hat tip to Profy.com]

AOL to close YouTube competitor. In related news, AOL had a YouTube competitor?

Duncan Riley — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:26:01 +0000

AOL will shut AOL Video Uncut, its user generated video YouTube competitor in early December.

AOL Video Uncut launched in 2006 with promises of greatness, targeted at AOL’s strong base of IM users. The service did get off to a rough start, with reports from the time saying “UnCut started with some dismal functionality, and lacked the features necessary to compete with the likes of YouTube”

PaidContent notes that AOL relied on third party technology (originally VideoEgg) and that the growing decline in user generated video sites may have broader effects on platform providers.

I’d say something along the lines of how sad it is to see AOL Video Uncut fold, but until today, I’d never heard of the service, and given its complete failure, I’m betting most of you reading this wouldn’t have heard of it either.

AOL Video Uncut joins recent AOL closures including XDrive, Bluestring and AOL Pictures.

AOL

Is the Blog Network model dying?

Duncan Riley — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 03:13:01 +0000

Blogging may have started from personal journals, but the diaries of 2000 evolved into something different. As sites grew a new form of company emerged, the blog network, that aimed to take the experience often gathered in a few blogs across many.

Gawker Media was the first notable blog network, but Weblogs Inc was the first to truly go wide quickly in pursuit if growth. That Weblogs Inc model became the inspiration to many, from b5media, a company I was a co-founder of, through to hundreds of smaller and some larger players. Networks thrived during the good times as advertising rates climbed as companies flooded the space in pursuit of targeting blog readers, and blogging itself continued to grow.

In 2008 however, the picture is rapidly changing. The glory days of blog growth has passed, and while many blogs still grow (including this one), many don’t as market saturation makes the market harder than it has ever been. Throw in the economic crisis, and a slowing in online advertising growth, and things are starting to look grim.

The blog network model is under threat.

We reported November 3 that ReadWriteWeb has closed its blog network. Others including Glam Media are facing difficulties (although Glam is a hybrid network + ad network), and the father of blog networks Nick Denton is predicting a 40% drop in ad rates for 2009, after making widespread cuts around his network.

Weblogs Inc sites are thriving, although the company has had a complete makeover since being acquired by AOL 3 years ago. Many of the tech/ special interest blogs have been dumped in favor of a primarily lifestyle play, supported by the AOL portal itself, and the company is shifting to full time employees over the previous standard blog network contractor model. So while they offer good news, they are not a typical case.

One brand advantage

ReadWriteWeb while dumping its blog network is instead launching new blogs under the ReadWriteWeb banner (and on the ReadWriteWeb URL). The inspiration actually lies in traditional media to some extent, but I call this the Huffington Post model. The Huffington Post was an inspiration to the founding of this site, because they proved that you can mix different streams of content on a blog successfully on the one large site under the one brand.

The problem with going wide in a network is the need to have to build individual brands vs a single brand. By increasing content under the one url and one brand, you strengthen that brand instead of splitting your time between promoting multiple brands, even when those brands reside in the one network.

There’s also one other advantage the single brand/ blog method has: it’s easier to sell ads on one site than many sites. Often advertisers aren’t interested in network buys, and may prefer a one site buy over many (particularly where the verticals in the network are different), least this is my experience in the past. It’s easier selling 750,000 page views on one site than 2 million on 10 sites.

Vertical bundling?

My former company b5media was one of the best cases of a wide blog network model. At funding, the company had 250 blogs, and peaked at 350 blogs before cutting back (I don’t have the full number, but it’s around 300 today). Notably b5media has started to launch portal destination sites for its content, such as Starked.com for celebrity news, and Bizzia.com for business news, not replacing individual blogs, but bundling content by vertical, and establishing individual brands for each space. I asked CEO Jeremy Wright the question, and his response came down to verticals

Our belief is still in the “wide” sense (vs say a single vertical) but that you need REACH within EACH of the verticals you cover for it to work. You can’t just do 300-400 blogs or whatever and hope some kind of magic happens. Plus, you need BRANDS.

Slow bleed

The blog network model is dying, although it may never die entirely, and companies such as Weblogs Inc, Gawker, Shiny Media, b5media and others will likely have long futures ahead of them. For those starting new today, the days of building many sites, splitting the focus away from a key brand has passed, and the likelihood of new successful blog networks emerging in the short term is slim at best.

We are likely to see consolidation in the space over the coming years, as titles fold, merge, or join new entities, but even consolidation can lead back to the main brand, for example the Crikey blog network saw existing stand alone blogs come under the one URL, so although the brands continue to exist in some ways, they do so in a way that contributes to the overall brand.

The days of launching dozens of new sites under different URLs has definitely passed. The big blogs of tomorrow will likely be mega-sites that often focus on content outside a key vertical, under the one brand.

(img credit)

Former AOL, Yahoo Execs Team Up For New Blog Network

JR — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:31:47 +0000

A former AOL exec has recruited a team of tech veterans to help fund his new sports blogging network. Jim Bankoff, one-time programming chief of AOL, has just secured a “mid-seven-figure sum” of money for SportsBlog Nation (also known as SB Nation), a startup that’s been chugging along under the radar for several months now, according to published reports.

The funding, the Sports Business Journal says, comes from former Yahoo senior executives Dan Rosensweig and Jeff Weiner — who just left Yang and company in June — along with Accel Partners, the company that put up the cash for Facebook. Also on-board are AOL vice chairman emeritus Ted Leonsis and other Silicon Valley finance stars.

SB Nation consists of about 150 individually written and maintained blogs organized by topic — baseball, basketball, college, football, hockey, soccer, or “general.” Each one primarily focuses on a specific team and is run by a writer in the team’s city. According to the Journal, the site retains ownership of all content and then shares ad revenue with its bloggers.

Thus far, the site claims about 2 million unique visitors a month and says some of its blogs rival major media outlets for coverage of particular teams.

Yahoo7 to cut 10% of workforce

Duncan Riley — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 05:28:34 +0000

Yahoo7, the Australian version of Yahoo, is to cut 10% of its workforce.

News reports that workers are expected to be told of the cuts this afternoon. 20 positions will go, but it isn’t clear which positions were facing the axe.

Yahoo7 is a joint venture between Yahoo in the United States, and the Seven Network in Australia. The decision to cut jobs is independent of Yahoo’s previous announcement to cut 10% of its global workforce. Prior to Yahoo7, the Seven Network ran a joint portal with AOL called AOL7.

Yahoo has had a difficult time in Australia, where Google has long held the dominant position in the market (more so and for longer than in the United States), with some reports stating that Google has close to 90% market share.

Update: Yahoo7 has confirmed the job cuts, but not the number. The staffing changes are said to be effective immediately.

3 year later, AOL Weblogs Inc is thriving with brilliant numbers

Duncan Riley — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 08:00:55 +0000

It only seems like yesterday that Jason Calacanis launched the blog network Weblogs Inc. I can still remember him pitching me at The Blog Herald, asking me to cover his new network. It took a couple of months after September 2003 for me to be convinced that Calacanis wasn’t selling snake oil and I should actually start covering what he was doing with the company.

Fast forward to 2005 and Weblogs Inc became the biggest acquisition of a blog network, being acquired by AOL for a reported $25 million. Weblogs Inc’s success was an inspiration to many of us in the blogging space, and although we never directly competed, Weblogs Inc’s success (pre acquisition) was deep in our minds when I founded b5media with Darren Rowse and Jeremy Wright in May of the same year.

The third anniversary of AOL’s acquisition of Weblogs Inc is today, and I had the opportunity to speak with Marty Moe, the current head of operations at Weblogs Inc prior to the third anniversary, and the figures he shared with me are nothing short of staggering. Here’s a walk through on the presentation he sent me, and my notes from it.

Weblogs Inc Circa October 2005

The key figures: 1.7 million unique visitors on 6.5 million page views. 4 employees.

Weblogs Inc Circa October 2008

The numbers speak for themselves. 19 million unique visitors, 13 million in the United States vs 2 million at acquisition. Page views up from 6 million to 81 million in the US, 106 million globally.

Weblogs Inc has also started a shift away from the low cost freelance model that Calacanis championed, to full time employees. The number has gone from 4 to 26. I specifically asked Moe the exact makeup of the full time employees, and where they reside. His response is that most of them are editorial/ writers for the Weblogs Inc blogs. He noted that AOL believe it is important that key staff work primarily on Weblogs Inc blogs, and not as a hobby. He clarified this in saying that freelance bloggers will always be an important part of the mix, but they believed that their key bloggers should be full time employees dedicated to their sites alone. He also said that AOL would be looking to increase the number of full time employees.

I asked whether the full time employees had to report to an office in a central location, and Moe was quick to jump on this. Most of the full time employees in Weblogs Inc work from their own location; Moe said that it would allow them to employee someone from New Zealand as an example, who couldn’t check in to a central office.

The flagship: Engadget

As it was in its pre-AOL owned days, Engadget remains the flagship of the Weblogs Inc network. Interestingly the site now gets significantly more international traffic than US traffic. The Engadget sites outside Engadget itself have grown strongly.

I asked Moe about branding: in particular, the occasionally confusing branding statements out of AOL that included Engadget. At one stage, Engadget was the AOL Tech Channel, but now it seems to be a brand in it’s own right.

Moe admitted to some experimentation in the past, not all of it successful. He claims that the days of confused branding are behind the network, and that AOL now fully understood the benefits of brands within the network.

Broader network

There were a number of other slides I won’t share, mostly because they deliver the same positive message. The notable parts: The Joystiq network is doing numbers that are close to the Engadget network. WowInsider in now nearly as big as Joystiq itself. The Autoblog network is seen as a huge growth opportunity for AOL. The existing network is pumping 14 million page views a month, and Autoblog will offer country sites for the UK, France and Germany before the end of the year.

What is impressive is the influence of the blogging culture over AOL as a whole

The Blogsmith blogging platform in the center of this push. The slide says 700 blogs, but this includes closed blogs (but sill live) and internal blogs, so the total number of actual blogs being updated publicly today is less than half that figure.

But the mix of sites is telling. TMZ, which isn’t usually lumped in with Weblogs Inc is actually part of the network, and is doing huge numbers. There’s a range of other sites, some obviously blogs, some not so much, that are being powered by Blogsmith.

I asked Moe whether the Blogsmith platform may one day be offered outside of AOL, given rumors in that direction over several years. He said that it had been discussed previously, but no decision had been made.

The biggest and the best

This slide speaks for itself.

Conclusion

I have been harsh of AOL’s treatment of Weblogs Inc in the past, but I have since corrected the record. AOL is using the Weblogs Inc setup as a consumer play, and it is delivering in traffic for them. I asked Moe whether the network might one day go niche again (particularly in tech), and he didn’t rule it out, but confirmed that their strength was in consumer sites, and that’s their current direction.

The growth numbers are staggering in terms of the broader blog network scene, and credit where it is due, AOL has done an amazing job with the company they purchased.

As a last aside, I asked Moe about the economic crisis, and Weblogs Inc’s exposure to it. Moe told me that they intend on increasing their investment in blogs during this time to make sure they remain on top in terms of traffic and reach. Advertising may decline, but sites with growing traffic are better able to counter the decline.

AOL Launches New “Globally Local” Blog Network

JR — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:43:37 +0000

AOL has launched a new magazine-style blog site that attempts to combine entertainment news with city-based stories. Digital City describes itself as having “a local slant, but global appeal.”

Officially announced this morning, the site’s front page now features a post talking about celebrity birthdays and other noteworthy occasions on 9/29. Perusing the site further will uncover everything from food and nightlife-related news to holiday-specific content and even travel talk. Oddly, for a site with “local slant,” the site doesn’t let you enter your own city to find local information relevant to you (at least, not in any easily located way); rather, it presents a mish-mosh of stories that may or may not relate to random cities here and there. The goal, seemingly, is to have those stories appeal to audiences both inside and outside of the featured geographic regions.

Interestingly, the name Digital City comes from an old and no longer used AOL brand name. Maybe the new incarnation will eventually find its crowd, but my initial reaction is similar to The Social’s: The site seems a bit unfocused and all over the place as far as content and approach.

AOL, by the way, isn’t the only familiar name launching a new network this week. Former staffers from Weblogs Inc started a network called Crowd Fusion recently as well, with the first site — a gadget blog named Obsessable — trying to take a different angle from its competition. Read Duncan Riley’s take on the project here.

AOL

AOL launches new blogs. PS: I was wrong on Weblogs Inc

Duncan Riley — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:48:15 +0000

Back in July I wrote a post arguing that issues at Weblogs Inc prove that big companies and blog networks are a difficult mix, and that AOL proved it. While there is a still a sound case that in many spaces, niche blogs work better in independent companies, AOL doesn’t prove the point, because they’ve just launched two new blogs, and many parts of the AOL blogging empire are thriving.

The new sites are Lemondrop, covering women’s lifestyle, and PopEater, covering pop culture, and both join a stable of successful AOL lifestyle/ pop blogs including TMZ and Stylelist.

While the Weblogs Inc stable of blogs haven’t thrived at AOL (some of the tech blogs, such as Engadget aside), what we’ve seen is AOL use the base provided by Weblogs Inc, including the Blogsmith platform, to launch dozens of new sites in non-tech verticals. Blogging is driving AOL’s content play, and although many of the old Weblogs Inc titles a dying a slow death, they’re really irrelevant in the overall picture of how AOL is successfully delivering top blogs that work.

I don’t have any hard numbers, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that AOL is now the biggest blogging network on the planet. Many of the new sites are thriving, presumably in part due to the new sites not being burdened by the pay structure and issues surrounding the Weblogs Inc titles.

Retrospect is always brilliant, so I’ll admit that my previous commentary myopically focused on the Weblogs Inc sites instead of the broader picture, and the numbers don’t lie, I was wrong. AOL is actually doing a lot of right things in blogging, and although there handling of Weblogs Inc could have been better, it’s the end result that counts.

AOL

I want to be acquired by AOL [Socialthing]

Duncan Riley — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 06:06:35 +0000

AOL’s acquisition of lifestreaming service Socialthing has been confirmed, reports Mashable. Financials have not been revealed.

According to their QBase entry, “Simplifying the management of sites and services that you already use like blogs and social networks, socialthing! synchronizes your personal information, content, and friendships so that you can post this information across the social web, as opposed to just having it contained in a single site.”

Socialthing can be added to a long list of AOL Acquisitions, including Truveo, Sphere, Bebo and Weblogs Inc. in the social space.

AOL may not be the most popular or most highly trafficked company on the web, but they’re like the little engine that could, they keep on trying, and they aren’t afraid to spend money to buy in destinations and tools to help them achieve their goals. Their success rate with acquisitions may not be perfect, and we’ve covered issues at Weblogs Inc previously, but they always seem to try their best with acquisitions, as opposed to Google who has a track record of letting acquisitions die off while completely ignoring existing user bases.

The question then becomes, who would you rather be acquired by? On their track record with acquisitions, and a company that is trying its hardest to deliver the best from acquired products, the answer for me at least would be AOL and I’m betting that I’m not alone in thinking that way either.

socialthing

Google’s Invesment in AOL Now Less Than a Billion

Dominic Rivera — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 06:00:02 +0000

In 2006, Google gave AOL $1 billion in cash for a 5 percent indirect equity stake in the company. Now, in a regulatory filing with the SEC, Google believes that its investment may be worth less than a billion and may review for impairment and financial write-downs in the future.

“We believe our investment in AOL may be impaired,” Google said in its latest quarterly financial filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

At the time of the investment, AOL was valued at $20 billion. It has since then gone down to $10 billion based on different projections. With AOL still in the dark as to its directions and partnerships nowhere, it is only right for Google to worry about its $1 billion. With that money, they could have bought worthy companies, like Facebook in 2006?

AOL proves that big companies and blog networks are a difficult mix

Duncan Riley — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 01:47:46 +0000

A week after announcing cut backs, bloggers at the AOL Weblogs Inc are still up in arms, according to a post at ReadWriteWeb.

In an internal briefing AOL Senior VP of Programming Marty Moe spun a positive line, noting that traffic and revenue was growing across the network, and that the company had further international expansion plans. However, “blogger compensation costs were exceeding allocated budgets and needed a breather before major restructuring. From now all on each Weblogs Inc. blog will have its own budget and run as a semi-independent business.”

It’s also not a case that blogs in the network are all losing money, instead “Moe also explained that many of the blogs that have faced cuts were struggling to reach a point of profitability that was desired.” The emphasis is mine, but it’s the key: desired profitability. Simply, many blogs aren’t making enough money.

But how much money is enough, and do blogs work well in corporate environments that emphasize profit margins?

Blog started as personal pages with no budgets or ROI tracking. Some evolved into businesses themselves, complete with budgets, wages and even marketing expenses, but compared to old media they are nearly always lean. Some make good money, but keep their expenses low, others balance expenses and profit, investing returns in their writers instead of themselves. As stand alone entities blogs even at the very top do not resemble large corporations or traditional media in any way. AOL is a large corporation that grew fat off its dialup business and is still struggling today to turn itself into something more streamlined and lean. Instead of continuing to run a lean ship at Weblogs Inc, AOL has instead fallen into the build it and they will come approach that included increasing staff numbers on the expectation that profits would follow. They have succeeded in some cases, but in others they have failed miserably. The ethos of a lean network under Jason Calacanis that emphasized growth opportunities while keeping costs under control has long disappeared, but this is to be expected from any large organization.

On profit, the acceptance of a blog with a small profit with or without growth potential but kept on none the less is replaced by the need to show significant profits from every blog in the network. Large corporations strictly number crunch every dollar, and those that don’t make the cut, even when profitable, lose support. And yet, in blogging we accept that some sites don’t make as much as others, that some will have a bigger margin, and we don’t necessarily hold one better than the other, at least as a value proposition in continuing trade. Blogs can be a fine margin business, and this will never sit well in a corporate setting.

Blogs can be successfully acquired, and will be so in the future, but the more blogs in a network, the easier the lean machine ethos is lost when a larger corporation acquires the blogs, unless of course they are kept as a separate business unit. AOL proves it.

AOL