The name AOL, apart from conjuring echoes of the most disastrous merger in business history, redounds with the archaic sound of a phone-driven modem screeching as it connects with some fusty computers sequestered in Dulles, Va., the former headquarters of the company.
But AOL, often derided as the original gated community, is now manufacturing a broad array of digital media that is free for the grabbing. There are 300 working content producers in its New York headquarters, backed by hundreds of other freelancers and programmers in Bangalore, Dublin and Dulles, cranking out copy and editing photos for more than 80 Web sites. Ten are ranked in Technorati’s top 100. Politics Daily, which began in April, already has 3.6 million unique users a month, while Politico, a much more established name, has 1.1 million, according to comScore, a digital audience measurement company. In the aggregate, the media properties at AOL have about 76 million unique visitors.
Visitors to sites like Engadget and FanHouse may not know that those sites emanate from a company that used to confine most of its communication to telling them they’ve got mail. Which is sort of the idea.
Finally, perhaps tired of all the zigzagging from a declining asset, Time Warner announced plans to spin the enterprise out on its own by the end of this year.
And wouldn’t it be funny if about the time that Time Warner forced AOL to stand on its own two feet, it actually was able to?
AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo. At least three companies that have an absurdly huge and underused potential on the webitubes arena. Any of them could kick Google’s ass and punt it so far off the ring that you wouldn’t be able to find it with Google Maps.
It’s too bad for them that potential alone isn’t enough.
Stealth Comeback? More like resurrection…
I wonder if we could do the same to Prodigy?
I started using AOL back in the day. I still use it as my main e-mail account. I don’t use that lame wall-garden software. I use AOL.com. Its free just like gmail, hotmail, yahoomail, etc. I’m too lazy to change. What difference does it make.
Everyone used to be on a bulletin board. That’s where we all met up. Then it was national systems (AOL, Prodigy, CompuServ). That’s where we met up. Now it’s Facebook or MySpace. The difference? None really. More animated GIFs and flash animation, but exact same concept. You and your friends will all still flock to one “thing”, whether it’s AOL, or Facebook. AOL worked fine, before everyone had broadband and open internet. When you HAD to connect via a modem to get online, it was just dandy. Now we have open internet, but everyone still flocks to common sites to hang out (Facebook). The more things change…
Awwww, I love my screeching dial-up sound.
Dial-up comes in handy at times, like when the power is out and you really need to send or receive something.
I started on Compuserve and then moved to AOL. I kept it for several years until broadband came to town. I think even then I kept it a couple more years because of the Parental Controls. But now after ditching AOL mail I only access AOL portal for a news source once in a while. I really think AOL has missed the boat on reinventing themselves. Especially if they plan to charge anything for their services. Even their advertising has not produced the revenue the thought. I say ditch dial up service and try and do something similar to Yahoo and maybe work on some exclusive content.