AOL is Here: 2011

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Revealed: The Huffington Post Wanted To Buy TechCrunch Back In The Day

Leena Rao currently works as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More

My boss, Michael Arrington, sat down with his boss (and my boss as well), Arianna Huffington for a brief chat at TechCrunch Disrupt, where Huffington revealed that she tried to ‘merge’ the Huffington Post with TechCrunch before AOL bought us last September.

Of course, now we are all one big happy family now that AOL also scooped up The Huffington Post for $315 million, and we are now part of the Huffington Post Media Group, too.

Arianna Huffington is the president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, a nationally syndicated columnist, and author of thirteen books. Her latest, Third World America, published in...

Learn more

View the original article here

Touchdown Called Back: Fleaflicker Founder Buys Back Fantasy Sports Site From AOL

MG Siegler has been writing for TechCrunch since 2009. He covers the web, mobile, social, big companies, small companies, essentially everything. And Apple. A lot. Prior to TechCrunch, he covered various technology beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan. He’s previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked in Hollywood and in San Diego where... → Learn More

Over three years ago, we reported that AOL had acquired the New Jersey-based fantasy sports site Fleaflicker. It seemed like a touchdown for 26-year-old founder Ori Schwartz. Now it’s looking more like a touchdown that was just called back.

AOL has alerted members of the service today that Schwartz has bought back Fleaflicker. As of July 22, AOL will no longer be in control of the site which has dwindled under the control of our parent company. “While we love Fleaflicker (and our users love Fleaflicker), we wanted to find a home for the product where it can receive more love and attention,” is the subtle middle finger in their FAQ.

The good news is that the service now has a new lease of life.?The newly created Fleaflicker LLC will continue to operate things without interruption. And all user data will remain intact without users have to do anything (those who do not wish to have their data transfered to the newly-owned service can opt-out). It will also remain free.

The bad news is that the timing of the transition could not be any worse. Every day, it’s looking more and more likely that the NFL lockout will put at least a part of the upcoming season in jeopardy. The NBA also faces a lockout this coming season. This will all be very problematic for fantasy sports in the coming months, to say the least.

Still, let’s hope that Fleaflicker can tap back into their bootstrapped ways and get back to the point that they were at in 2006, when Mike called them the “better” fantasy sports site.

Below, the message to users:

Dear AOL Fleaflicker User:
Fleaflicker has been acquired by its original founder, Ori Schwartz. As of July 22, 2011 AOL will no longer operate the Fleaflicker service.
The good news is that Ori’s company, Fleaflicker LLC, will continue to operate the service without interruption. All your fantasy teams and account information (including your login E-mail) will be transferred to Fleaflicker LLC. Please review the Fleaflicker LLC Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
Nothing is required of you to continue playing fantasy sports for free on Fleaflicker. However, if you do not want your data to be transferred, you may opt out by clicking here before July 22, 2011. If you do not opt out by this date, we will automatically begin the transition.
Sincerely,
The AOL Fleaflicker Team
For more information on the transfer of your account, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions area at www.fleaflicker.com/transition-faq.

Fleaflicker is a fantasy football site that rose in popularity during the 2005 NFL season, when many large fantasy sports providers, including ESPN.com, suffered major outages and forced fans...

Learn more

AOL is a global advertising-supported Web company, with display advertising network in the U.S., a substantial worldwide audience, and a suite of popular Web brands and products. The company’s strategy...

Learn more

View the original article here

The Devil Made Me Do It. AOL's Regrouped Advertising.com Is A $500 Million Business

Erick Schonfeld currently works at TechCrunch as Co-Editor. He joined in 2007 and is based in New York. Schonfeld oversees the editorial content of the site, selects and edits guest posts, helps to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produces some TCTV shows, and writes daily for the blog. He is also the father of three... → Learn More

AOL’s advertising platforms, which are grouped under the Advertising.com business, is now a $500 million business, the company revealed today at its Investor Day in New York City. The Advertising.com Group is a new business unit inside AOL, which includes six separate products: The Advertising.com ad-serving network (which AOl acquired in 2004) and AdTech, along with more recent acquisitions 5Min (now AOL Video), Pictela, GoViral, and the internally built Seed product. (AOL also owns TechCrunch, but we are part of the Huffington Post Media Group).

All of that, all together is a $500 million business, which is about a quarter of AOL’s total revenue. And it’s clear that AOL thinks it can become a $1 billion business. Today was the first time AOL broke out these numbers.

AOL is trying to position itself as the best place for brands to advertise next to premium content. It is trying to do this first on its own sites, primarily with its Project Devil ads. But the bigger play is to become the ad network for premium brands across the Web by extending Project Devil ads and other new ad formats to the 26,000 publishers on AOL’s ad network.

And in fact, through Pictela, AOL is going to expand its highly engaging Project Devil Ads out across what it is calling the Devil Network. Devil Ads are larger-format ads that can include video or photo galleries, maps, or other interactive elements. AOL is seeing very high engagement rates with these ads, sometimes as high as 10 percent. Devil ads are just one format. Expect AOl to move into mobile ads and other formats as well.

AOL’s entire focus is to create branded experiences for big brand marketers. That includes putting those ads next to great content, but it also means rethinking the boring, old banner ad. Ned Brody, who runs the Advertising.com group, sees the opportunity this way: “There is $50 billion sitting in a locked vault, television and print. It is hard to convince advertisers to take that to a market where they get 0.2% clickthrough rates.”

In order for this plan to work, however, other sites will have to change their designs to be able to accept the bigger Devil ads. If they in fact do perform better, they might do that. But adoption will be a challenge. (Other Devil ads fit into standard 300X250 and 300X600 ad units).

Learn more

View the original article here

AOL's Q1: Display Ad Revenues Finally Going Up, But Profits Are Down 86 Percent

AOL's Q1: Display Ad Revenues Finally Going Up, But Profits Are Down 86 Percent | TechCrunchbN_cfg={h:location.hostname};(function(d){var s = d.createElement("script");s.src = "http://o.aolcdn.com/os/aol/beacon.min.js";d.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(s);})(document); /* */#site-logo { background: url(http://s2.wp.com/wp-content/themes/vip/tctechcrunch2/images/logos/green.png) !important; } HomeStartupsMobileGadgetsSocialTCTVMoreEnterpriseFundings & ExitsGamingGreenTechOpinionDisrupt SFCrunchBase Hot topicsAppleGoogleX100FacebookDeadpoolkickstarterUltrabook Comment TweetAOL's Q1: Display Ad Revenues Finally Going Up, But Profits Are Down 86?Percent

Robin Wautersposted on Wednesday, May 4th, 2011 CommentsView Author PageI’m on Twitter

Robin Wauters currently works as a staff writer for TechCrunch and lead editor of Virtualization.com.Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in Belgium, a tiny country in Europe. He can often be found working from his home or...→ Learn More

Our parent company AOL has just released its quarterly earnings for Q1 2011, and it’s a mixed bag (again).

Revenue came in at $551.4 million, which is better than most analysts had anticipated – the company was expected to earn $0.17 per share on revenues of $536.35 million. Actual earnings came in at $0.04 per share, down 86 percent.

Notably, global display advertising revenue grew 4 percent, marking the first quarter of year-over-year growth since Q4 2007 (!). Domestic display grew 11 percent in the quarter, or 6 percent excluding acquisitions.

Overall advertising revenue declined $40.6 million compared to Q1 2010, mostly due to lower third-party network revenue associated with shutdowns and reduced operations in Europe, in addition to the absence of revenue from Bebo and ICQ (which AOL sold in 2010).

Leaving aside those AOL-implemented initiatives, advertising revenue was essentially flat for the quarter, reflecting declines in search and contextual revenue but growth in display revenue and increases in Third Party Network revenue.

Among the notable things that happened at AOL during the first quarter: the company closed the acquisitions of goviral and The Huffington Post and aligned all of its content under the newly formed AOL Huffington Post Media Group, with Arianna Huffington as editor-in-chief.

aol q1 2011

Crunchbase AOL Company:
AOL Website:
http://www.aol.com IPO:
NYSE:AOL

Learn more

Tags: AOL

Play, AOL's Android Music Sharing App, Hits 250,000 Downloads In Three Weeks

When a mobile app gets more than a hundred thousand downloads in its first few weeks, that is usually a good thing. Instagram hit 100,000 in a week, and music-sharing app Soundtracking got there in two weeks. But another music-sharing app, Play by AOL, is right up there with 250,000 downloads in three weeks.

Play is very similar to Soundtracking. It lets you share snippets of songs, along with album art or photos, with your friends via Twitter, Facebook, or the in-app network. Play might even have more downloads than Soundtracking, which is getting far more buzz. But what’s interesting about Play is that it launched first on Android, and is not yet available on the iPhone. Still, it’s getting a decent amount of traction.

Winamp for Android, another AOL mobile music app, saw 500,000 downloads its first month in private beta, and is now well over 3 million. (TechCrunch is also owned by AOL). And games like Angry Birds have seen millions of Android downloads as well. This kind of traction is yet more evidence that Android has arrived as a viable alternative to the iPhone for app developers.

Learn more

The SoundTracking iPhone app is free, and is the best way to share the soundtrack to your life.

Learn more

Android is a software platform for mobile devices based on the Linux operating system and developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance. It allows developers to write managed...

Learn more

View the original article here

AOL Jumps To No. 2 Spot In comScore Online Video Rankings

Online video views continue to rise. ComScore has released data from its Video Metrix service, showing that 174 million Internet users in the United States watched online video content in March for an average of 14.8 hours per viewer. That’s up from 170 million users in February. In total, the U.S. Internet audience engaged in more than 5.7 billion viewing sessions during March (compared to 5 billion in February).

Google Sites (a.k.a. YouTube) was the top online video content property in March with 143.2 million unique viewers. AOL jumped from the seventh spot in February to the second spot in March with 57 million viewers. Yahoo Sites followed with 56.4 million viewers. Microsoft Sites came in fourth with 53.1 million viewers, while VEVO ranked fifth with 52.6 million viewers. Facebook came in sixth with 48.8 million viewers. Google Sites had the highest number of viewing sessions as it neared the 2 billion mark, and highest time spent per viewer at 276 minutes, or 4.6 hours.

So why did AOL jump five spots in the past month? There are a few possible reasons for this, but the main one is because comScore is counting video viewership differently than before. ComScore says that as the data analysis company switches over to UD, (unified digital measurement); AOL’s online video views have been boosted.

And of course, AOL has also recently become more bullish on video content and is ramping up video production on its properties. AOL bought video syndication network 5min last Fall for this reason. And in January 2010, AOL acquired StudioNow for $36.5 million to integrate a solid video creation platform into its content business. And AOL acquired the Huffington Post in February and closed the deal in early March. Videos from the Huffington Post are also contributing (and we are doing our small part with TCTV).

In terms of video ad views, Americans viewed 4.3 billion video ads in March, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at more than 1.2 billion. Tremor Media Video Network followed (and highest among video ad networks) with 804.3 million ad views, followed by Adap.tv (553 million) and BrightRoll Video Network (398 million).

Time spent watching videos ads neared 1.9 billion minutes during the month, with Hulu delivering the highest duration of video ads at 520 million minutes. Video ads reached 43 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 33 times during the month. Hulu also delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 47 over the course of the month.

Disclosure: We are owned by AOL.

“comScore is a global Internet information provider to which leading companies turn for consumer behavior insight that drives successful marketing, sales and trading strategies. comScore’s experienced analysts work closely with...

Learn more

View the original article here

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

AOL Authorizes $250 Million Stock Buyback Program After Share Price Falls Off A Cliff

Robin Wauters currently works as a staff writer for TechCrunch and lead editor of Virtualization.com. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in Belgium, a tiny country in Europe. He can often be found working from his home or... → Learn More

AOL (which, in case you didn’t know, has been the owner of TechCrunch for almost a year now) has announced that its board of directors has given the green light for a stock repurchase program that will allow the company to buy back up to $250 million of its outstanding shares of common stock from time to time over the next 12 months.

The move comes after AOL’s stock took a gigantic nosedive following the reporting of its second-quarter results.

AOL reported revenues of $542.2 million for the quarter, down 8 percent compared to Q2 2010, and a net loss of $11.8 million. The results beat analyst expectations, but investors were unhappy and sent shares to their lowest level since AOL separated from Time Warner in December 2009.

AOL also lowered its outlook for the year, which didn’t help.

A stock repurchase program lets companies buy back its own shares from the marketplace, thus reducing the number of outstanding shares, and is usually authorized when a company’s management believes the shares are undervalued or depressed. The reduction of the float means that even a company’s bottom line remains the same, its earnings per share increase.

AOL share price closed at $10.22 yesterday, down from $15.07 two days ago.

Comments Artie Minson, CFO of AOL:

“This announcement highlights both our strong balance sheet and free cash flow generation. We believe this is a unique opportunity to invest in our company.”

At June 30, 2011, AOL had $458.7 million of cash, while free cash flow was $77.2 million in Q2 2011.

Learn more

View the original article here

As 2012 Election Season Ramps Up, AOL's Patch Will Launch 33 Sites In 'Key' Primary States

In its last earnings report, AOL revealed that it poured $40 million into its hyperlocal news platform Patch in the quarter. It’s no secret that AOL, Arianna Huffington and CEO Tim Armstrong have high hopes for Patch. And today, the company is announcing that that Patch will launch 33 new sites in New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Carolina —the first three states to hold primaries in 2012. In addition, Patch has announced the launch of the first Patch Military site: Camp Pendleton Patch.

The 33 new primary state sites aims to provide a platform for citizens, candidates, and influencers to discuss local issues and events, including the impact of national and state issues on the local landscape heading into the 2012 election season. Patch’s journalists will cover issues on the sites and the hyperlocal news sites will also aim to serve as a non-partisan forum.

“With its hyperlocal focus, Patch has the ability to be the eyes and ears for what is happening at the grassroots level all across the country,” said Arianna Huffington, President and Editor-in-Chief of AOL Huffington Post Media Group. “By expanding to key primary states, Patch positions itself squarely on the front lines of the presidential campaign and will be able to deliver a real-time snapshot of how pivotal communities are reacting to candidates – as well as immediate feedback on whether the issues that matter most to these towns are being addressed.”

Patch’s first Military site will cover news coming from Camp Pendleton Patch and neighboring Oceanside, CA. AOL says it will be launched additional Military focused sites in the coming year. And Patch’s Latino-focused sites will also be rolled out later in the year. Patch is now in over 800 communities in 18 states plus Washington, D.C.

While we are over nearly a year away from from the primaries for the 2012 elections, clearly AOL is eying this election season as a lucrative time to draw page views and advertiser dollars. Already presidential candidates are throwing their hats in (and out) of the ring, and AOL, with its aggressive content strategy, doesn’t want to be late to the coverage game.

Disclosure: TechCrunch is a part of the AOL Huffington Post Media Group.

Patch is a community-specific news and information platform dedicated to providing comprehensive, hyper-localized coverage for individual towns and communities.

Learn more

View the original article here

AOL’s Q2: Global Advertising Revenue Finally Up Again, Net Loss Narrows

Robin Wauters currently works as a staff writer for TechCrunch and lead editor of Virtualization.com. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in Belgium, a tiny country in Europe. He can often be found working from his home or... → Learn More

Internet access, content and online advertising company AOL (which also owns TechCrunch) this morning reported its earnings for the second quarter of the year.

AOL reported a net loss of $11.8 million, compared with a year-ago loss of a little over $1 billion, which had included a major goodwill impairment charge and higher restructuring costs.

Total revenue came in at $542.2 million, down 8 percent compared to Q2 2010. Subscription revenue took another – albeit expected – hit with a 23 percent decrease.

However, advertising revenue (finally) grew 5 percent to $319 million after an essentially flat Q1 2011, notably despite the impact of AOL’s exit from certain countries and operations in recent times, with display advertising up a decent 14 percent.

Partially offsetting advertising revenue growth was a decline in search and contextual revenue of $17.6 million, the company said.

In a statement, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong says the company’s return to global advertising growth for the first time since 2008 is another ‘meaningful step forward’ in the comeback of the AOL brand.

That may well be the case, but the road to sustainable profitability is still long.

AOL highlights its Huffington Post Media Group, which saw the number of unique visitors surpass 30 million (“and The New York Times”) in May 2011, according to comScore. User comments on The Huffington Post for Q2 surpassed 12 million, and recently topped 100 million since it was started.

Learn more

View the original article here

Courtesy Of Moo, AOL's About.me Allows Users To Print Free Business Cards

Personal profile startup About.me, which was acquired by AOL last December, is adding a new feature today—the ability to print business cards for free from personal profiles on the platform.

In case you aren’t familiar with About.me, the site offers people free profile pages. On your dedicated profile pake, can include your name, bio and links to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites that have information about you. Users can also upload high-resolution photos to the site, making profiles look fairly sleek and professional with minimal effort.

Now, any About.me use can register to print 50 free business cards (users will need to pay for shipping) from profile information, courtesy of Moo’s nifty printing business. Moo will add your about.me profile, unique url and QR code to your cards. Users can also upload additional images; edit contact info and more.

Moo is also releasing an API that will allow other small businesses to tap into their printing capabilities. The API program has been under development for a while, but will officially be launched through About.me today.

about.me (PumpkinHead) was founded by Tony Conrad, Ryan Freitas and Tim Young in December 2009. One year later, about.me was acquired by AOL. about.me’s simple focus enables you to a)...

Learn more

Offices in Providence, Rhode Island and London, MOO.COM prints “MiniCards” and other stationery from your photos or designs which can be uploaded directly or accessed through Flickr, Picasa or...

Learn more

View the original article here

Tim Armstrong Gives Some Project Devil Details

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong is betting on the devil. Project Devil, that is. Those are the ad units on AOL properties (including TechCrunch), and now on Hearst sites as well, that take up all the ad spots with one campaign. Instead of 14 different ads on a page, the same space if all given to one advertiser. They are designed to be more engaging as well via the addition of maps, videos, and other interactive elements. In today’s first quarter earnings call, Armstrong told analysts: “On every single benchmark, Devil Ads perform better.”

He then broke down some stats: compared to “industry benchmarks” (i.e. run-of-the-mill display ads), AOL is seeing 6.4X the engagement rate with Project Devil ads than standard ones (10 percent versus 1.5 percent engagement), 1.9X the click-through rate, and 3.4X the time spent with the ads for those people who do engage (47 seconds versus 14 seconds). Project Devil video ads are played twice as much as other video ads.

If ads are AOL’s monetization engine, then Project Devil is the turbocharger. “Devil is currently a very small part of our inventory,” Armstrong says, “but a growing part of the revenue picture. We can use less inventory and get a bigger bang for the buck.”

AOL needs as much bang as it can get. In the first quarter, AOL was still fighting a 17 percent decline in total revenues, with the subscription business down 24 percent, and search and contextual ads down another 21 percent. But there was one bright spot. Display advertising looks like it may have turned the corner for AOL, with 4 percent revenue growth overall and 11 percent growth domestically. Project Devil is a part of that.

AOL eliminated 55 percent of its ad impressions by cleaning up its pages, and revenues still grew. The flip side of that is attracting a bigger audience on the content side. AOL si now the No. 2 online video publisher in terms of unique viewers. The Huffington Post alone grew 27 percent in unique visitors during the quarter from December, and Patch grew more than 100 percent off a small base (total unique visitors for Patch is now 6.5 million). The locally-targeted ads on Patch also do better than normal display, but that is another story and Patch still has a long way to go.

AOL’s new initiatives with Project Devil, Patch, and video are promising starts. Now Armstrong needs to scale them up.

Learn more

View the original article here

More Musical Chairs At AOL

Two years ago, Tim Armstrong replaced the ad chief he inherited, Greg Coleman, with one of his former Google lieutenants, Jeff Levick. The musical chairs still has not stopped. In a memo sent out to employees today (see below), Armstrong announced that Levick wil be stepping down, to be replaced by another trusted lieutenant, Ned Brody, who will take the new position of Chief Revenue Officer and President of AOL Advertising. He was previously COO of the media, advertising, and commerce group, as well as the president of AOL’s Paid Services group before taking over the Advertising.com group.

Most of the shakeup is happening in the sales organization, which is getting five new SVPs under Brody, who is charged with delivering consistent growth in advertising revenues and pushing AOL’s premium ad products such as Project Devil. Last quarter, total advertising revenues were still declining by 11 percent, although there was a ray of hope in that display advertising saw a 4 percent jump. Brody needs to keep growing the advertising business before older revenue streams dry up.

Meanwhile, AOL’s head of PR, Lauren Hurvitz, and head of HR, Kathy Andreasen, are also leaving. All of these changes are happening ahead of AOL’s second quarter earnings, which won’t be announced until August 9. (The stock is down a bit on the news).

On the editorial side, AOL now has five new general managers, including our own Heather Harde (who heads up AOL Tech, which includes TechCrunch and Engadget). At AOL, the GMs run the business, the editors run the editorial (so, for instance, Arianna Huffington, is stil the editor in chief). Those five GMs are:

? AOL.com – Chris Grosso
? Huffington Post – Brian Kaminsky
? Entertainment – Kerry Trainor (e.g. Moviefone, AOL Music)
? Marketplace – Jay Kirsch (e.g., AOL Autos, Finance, and AOL Industry)
? Tech – Heather Harde (e.g., TechCrunch, Engadget)

AOL is also trying to focus its business and brands. According to Armstrong’s memo, AOL’s growth strategies are now centered around:

1. Leading the digital content space
2. Leading the brand advertising space
3. Leading the premium video platform space
4. Leading the local content and advertising space
5. Leading the online membership services space

That is still probably two things too many. Investors are losing patience with AOL, which so far is not participating in the broad rally in online advertising revenues the rest of the industry is enjoying (well, except Yahoo, which isn’t doing so great either). At this point, management changes won’t really matter unless they are followed up by results.

Full memo below:

AOLers –
As we continue the comeback of AOL we are focused on growth. We have a few announcements today that will make the company simpler, faster and stronger. Our strategy remains clear and consistent and our execution and operational clarity have improved. We have stabilized the foundation of the company and our future is about executing our growth strategies focused on:
1. Leading the digital content space
2. Leading the brand advertising space
3. Leading the premium video platform space
4. Leading the local content and advertising space
5. Leading the online membership services space
As we have focused our growth in this simplified product portfolio, we are now combining our advertising sales organization with our advertising network and products organization. We are not watching trends in the advertising business, we are creating them. Project Devil has traction and will help lead the brand space online. In the video space, we have gone from being out of the race to becoming one of the largest forces for digital video distribution.
The first announcement is a global structural change to our advertising business. We are promoting Ned Brody to the new position of Chief Revenue Officer and President of AOL Advertising. Ned will oversee AOL’s global O&O advertising, global network business, sales, and advertising and publishing products. There are three goals we are hoping to accomplish with Ned in this new position. The first is a unified premium strategy for advertisers and publishers. The second is consistent growth in advertising spend across all our properties and networks. The third is a more rigorous approach to advertising and publishing system design. This will allow us to connect Project Devil and our Premium Brand Formats to the O&O properties as well as the network.
In addition to our new CRO position, we are also announcing expanded leadership roles for five world-class leaders in our sales organization. Tim Castelli, Wendy MacGregor, Tim Richards, and Jim Norton will be promoted to SVP and Michael O’Connor will be promoted to VP, Head of Sales Operations. These leaders along with Don Kennedy, SVP of Advertising.com Sales, and Chris Heine, SVP of Advertising Operations will form our sales leadership team and join Ned’s management team.
As a result of this global change, Jeff Levick will be leaving AOL after a six week transition period. Jeff undertook one of the toughest jobs in the Internet space when he joined AOL. In the past two years, he developed a world-class leadership team, led the industry toward the future of premium formats for brand advertising, and helped lead a game-changing shift in perception and quality of the AOL advertising experience. Jeff is a friend to many of us and we know we will see big things from him in his future career. We have been working closely together on the design of the sales structure and we both believe it will positively impact results for our team and our customers.
The second announcement we are making is a streamlined GM structure reporting directly to me, overseeing the connection between content and monetization. The GM organization will allow us to profitably manage our investments in media and optimize the yield opportunities with traffic and revenue. We have already put the following GM leaders in place:
? AOL.com – Chris Grosso
? Huffington Post – Brian Kaminsky
? Entertainment – Kerry Trainor (e.g. Moviefone, AOL Music)
? Marketplace – Jay Kirsch (e.g., AOL Autos, Finance, and AOL Industry)
? Tech – Heather Harde (e.g., TechCrunch, Engadget)
Our third announcement is aimed at streamlining our corporate operations. Artie Minson, CFO of AOL and President of Paid Services, will now take on managing both our international planning and our Google search relationship, which is an important partnership on many levels. As part of Artie’s new responsibilities, he will be transitioning HR, Corporate Communications, and Marketing back to me.
We will be consolidating all marketing functions and the corporate communications team into a single organization run by Maureen Sullivan. Lauren Hurvitz will transition out of AOL as part of the consolidation. Kathy Andreasen is also transitioning out of the company. Lauren and Kathy have been big champions for AOL and trusted members of the management team. Sandy Mott will assume the role of interim head of HR. We will also be opening up a search for a Global Head of HR.
The future for AOL is getting brighter and we are on the path of returning AOL to growth. I care about our team and our AOL brand, our consumers and customers, and our long-term outcome – the announcements today have this at the core.
We have very clear operating plans for the second half of the year as we reviewed on the all-hands call a few weeks ago and we review detailed updates every week, and in some cases daily. We won’t be hitting the pause button this week, we’ll be on fast-forward.

Photo credit: Makelessnoise

Learn more

Tim Armstrong was appointed CEO and Chairman of AOL in March 2009. Before becoming the CEO of AOL, Armstrong presided over Google’s North American and Latin American advertising sales and...

Learn more

View the original article here

Group Buying Site BuyWithMe Snags Patch.com EVP Away From AOL

Robin Wauters currently works as a staff writer for TechCrunch and lead editor of Virtualization.com. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in Belgium, a tiny country in Europe. He can often be found working from his home or... → Learn More

Our parent company AOL is having a rough time making money from Patch, its rapidly expanding network of local news sites, and that’s not its only problem. Today, group buying website BuyWithMe announced that it has recruited Charlie Gray, formerly Executive Vice President at Patch, as its new ‘Chief People Officer’.

BuyWithMe, which rivals the likes of Groupon and LivingSocial in the United States, says Gray will help manage the company’s growth plans, and hire, train and retain talent throughout the country.

BuyWithMe is certainly aggressive when it comes to acquiring its way into new markets. This year, it has already completed five acquisitions scooping up New York deals site Scoop St., Chicago deals siteDealADayOnline, San Francisco deals site Swoop, loyalty company Edhance, and LocalTwist.

BuyWithMe launched in 2009 and now operates in Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C.

At Patch, Gray scaled the growth from 100 employees in 30 locations to 1,400 employees in more than 800 locations in just one year, so the hire showcases BuyWithMe’s ambition for further expansion.

Previously, Gray served as Head of HR and Staffing for Google’s North American Advertising Sales department, where he oversaw all people-related functions for Google’s US and Canada sales and operations teams. He’s also worked for Ziff-Davis and RecycleBank in the past.

BuyWithMe is the premier group buying website where leading local merchants offer exclusive limited time offers to members of the BuyWithMe community. Through the power of its numbers,...

Learn more

View the original article here

AOL Editions Delivers A Daily Briefing To Your iPad

The dream of a personalized magazine tuned just for you keeps showing itself on the iPad. Today’s edition comes from AOL Editions, which is finally coming out after much fine-tuning and a silly video. (Disclosure: TechCrunch is also owned by AOL). Editions assembles a digital magazine for you once a day from a variety of online news sources and blogs—The Atlantic, Businessweek, CNNMoney, Forbes, TechCrunch, Cnet, Business Insider, Wired. It is trying to stake a position somewhere between The Daily’s all-original (and expensive) reporting and Flipboard‘s endless pages of prettified RSS feeds and social streams.

AOL Editions is designed to be completed in one sitting. It pulls in 30 to 50 stories across different sections like Top News, Technology, Business, Entertainment, Sports, Local News, and Travel. You pick the sections you want, enter your zipcode, and it does the rest. You can further train the app each time you read an article by tapping on sources and topics you want to follow or hide. The app pulls out a few main topic tags associated with each story for which you can effectively give a thumbs up or down by tapping on a check mark or an X. The next editions will show more stories from those sources or on those topics. ?You also can add blogs or news sources via a search box on each section start page as well (but only from sources without paywalls, no New York Times articles appear, for instance).

The design and navigation are pleasing enough once you wait for a minute or so for your edition to be pulled together on the fly each morning. ?Readers are greeted by a big cover picture with an old-style magazine mailing label that states their name, town, and the temperature. ?Sections start off with large photos and headline typeface. As you flip through the articles, the layouts vary with headlines and excerpts in different column configurations. When you tap on a story, an in-app browser will open up and take you to the original webpage. If the source is owned by AOL (such as TechCrunch or Patch for local news), you get this nice effect that allows you to swipe through all the text within the app, but only half the page is moving because the photo and headline stay still.

In addition to flipping through the edition sequentially, you can also pull up sections to jump to them directly or a full list of articles. Articles can be bookmarked or shared via email, Twitter or Facebook.

It’s a solid effort put out by the mobile team under David Temkin and Sol Lipman from AOL’s West Coast office (which is part of Brad Garlinghouse‘s group). But I have one main issue with it and that is the timeliness of the news in its pages. For my realtime tastes, they can be a little bit stale.

In an attempt to deliver something that is complete and completable, AOL Editions pulls together your personalized stories at the same designated time every day. If that is 8:00 AM, any news that happens after that will have to wait until your next edition “arrives” the next morning (although there is a way to override that and assemble the next edition immediately). If I open AOL Editions and read what I perceive as yesterday’s or even this morning’s news compared to what I can get online, I’ll just stick to the Web.

I, admittedly, am a news junkie whose livelihood depends on being up-to-the-minute on every tech headline, but I don’t think it’s just me. People spot check news apps and sites against one another. ?News apps need to be as current as the Web. Those are just table stakes.

While there is a certain satisfaction to being able to complete an Edition (or at least skim every headline and excerpt), it wouldn’t be too hard to add a few updates throughout the day to each section. The Edition could be reassembled every time I open the app, not some predetermined time of day. ?The algorithm that selects what stories to present is based on clusters of similar articles across top news sources. ?There is no social stream component like you have in Flipboard pulling out the images and text behind Tweeted or shared links. ?The benefit of this is that Editions is less noisy than Flipboard, but it is also missing out on the timeliness of the social news feed. ? Again, there is a different way to do this. ?Instead of showing every shared story in my Twitter and Facebook streams, Editions could show only the ones which hit a certain threshold of likes and reteweets.

As the news-finding algorithm improves, so will the overall experience.

View the original article here

AOL Launches "Incredibly Easy" Video Chat Service Internally; We Launch It Externally

Earlier today, AOL’s Head of AIM Products Jason Shellen sent an email to the entire company urging people not to share its contents with people outside of the company. Even though we’re a part of AOL, we didn’t get that email. Well, that is until someone was kind enough to leak it to us. Hey, we are not outside of the company so that’s fair right? And since we didn’t technically get the email, I have no problem sharing it.

Anyway.

AOL is on the verge of launching a “shiny new video chat product dubbed ‘AV’”. And it actually looks pretty good. It’s video chat, but super-simple. You don’t need an account to use it. You don’t need anything (besides, sadly, Flash installed on your computer). You hit the homepage, start a chat, get a link, and send that to friends. Up to four people can chat at once.

I’ve been playing around with it for a bit. It is super simple and well done. Aside from video chatting, you can text chat and it overlays on your stream in a nice way. You can also make your stream wider and freeze it.

Still in beta for now, Shellen notes that it “represents a lot of hard work by the AIM team over the last few months.” He also says that it’s the first of “several” new AIM launches coming soon. All will be web-focused.

The video chat play is a smart one. This is a space that is heating up really quickly. Apple has FaceTime across their devices, Chatroulette is supposedly making a comeback, Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker are back at work on Supyo (yes, Mike is an investor), and even Skype is back in the news about possible partnerships with Facebook or Google for their technology.

Speaking of Google, we’ve been hearing for months that they’re working on something similar?to AV.?And I suspect we’ll be hearing more about that shortly.

The point of Shellen’s email today was to share AV internally with AOLers to test it out. But we’re gonna do him one better. We’re going to share the link here so all of you can help test it out! Here she is!

AOL is hosting a product summit at their west coast HQ in Palo Alto next week. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about AV there. For now, enjoy.

Below, Shellen’s email to the troops. Reached for comment, Shellen refused to and seemed annoyed. Hey, it was either us publishing this or Business Insider, right? We’re brothers!

People of AOL,
AIM is proud to present you with a super secret internal launch (shhh!) of our shiny new video chat product dubbed “AV”. Still in beta, AV is a major step forward that represents a lot of hard work by the AIM team over the last few months.
AV is incredibly easy to use: Visit the home page, start a chat, get a link to send out, and you and up to three other people are video chatting in no time. There’s no account or login required, so there’s very little barrier to entry. Plus… it’s FUN!
As you may know, this is the first of several substantial new AIM launches and the first to represent our shift in focus to better web software. While you might have been one of our early testers of the entire new AIM effort, this is just the video portion and we’ll be in touch soon as the rest rolls out.
What I’m asking of you is to:
1. Use the product by checking out the link below, only with fellow Aol team members.
2. Give us feedback and bug reports through the “Feedback” link in the product.
3. DO NOT SHARE THIS WITH ANYONE OUTSIDE AOL!
4. Sorry, my “caps lock” key got stuck on during number 3. But seriously, don’t do it.
Enjoy: http://aim.com/av
Sincerely,
JASON SHELLEN
Head of AIM Products
P: XXX.XXX.XXXX AIM: XXXXXXXX
Palo Alto | NYC | Dulles
PS: To the ACG team for whom this email will seem oddly familiar, thank you for your help in providing feedback on our alpha version over the past few weeks. Please give us another spin now that we’ve worked out the kinks and keep giving us feedback so we can continue to improve.

Learn more

View the original article here

AOL Makes Fun Of Yahoo. And It's Actually Hilarious.

Alexia Tsotsis currently works for TechCrunch as a writer. She is also a blogger who attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA. She majored in Writing and Art, moving to New York City shortly after graduation to work in the Entertainment/Media industry. After four years of living in New York City and attending courses at New York... → Learn More

This is amazing. Earlier today Yahoo launched Android music app that happened to have the exact same name as the Android music app launched by AOL four months ago, “Play.”

Yes, Yahoo and AOL now both have music apps with the same name. ?And instead of laughing it off internally, AOL responded to the launch with this “Yapoo!” parody video. In a rare moment of badassery AOL is basically calling out the Yahoo Mobile Team for not being very creative.

Yeah, I know, “pot calling the kettle black” you say … But the most surprising part about this video is that it will make you laugh genuinely at its spot on depiction of copy/paste innovation, multiple times.

My favorite “we’re phoning it in” line: “What we need to do is find an app that we like and just reskin it, just put some purple in it. Boom.”

Side note: I’m beginning to think that AOL Senior Director of Mobile Projects?Sol Lipman, who made this video and also came up with the ‘Editions’ tagline (“The app for when you crap”),?is the single funniest person in our parent company.

Learn more

Yahoo was founded in 1994 by Stanford Ph.D. students David Filo and Jerry Yang. It has since evolved into a major internet brand with search, content verticals, and other...

Learn more

View the original article here

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong: Paid Content Can Work

TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington took the stage today to interview AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. It was actually at TechCrunch Disrupt New York last year where Armstrong first approached Arrington about buying TechCrunch. We all know how that worked out.

Armstrong and Arrington touched on a variety of subjects, including AOL’s agressive content strategy. While AOL’s content has remained free, Armstrong does seem to think that a paid content model can work. “It’s a matter of how you do it…but I’m a long term believer in paid content as a strategy.” As he cautions, AOL’s news content doesn’t have a price right now, and Armstrong didn’t reveal any future plans for a paywall but it’s certainly interesting to see that he isn’t totally against the strategy.

Armstrong’s stance is certainly interesting considering other media companies’ recent moves towards adopting paywall, such as The New York Times.

As for more acquisitions, Armstrong told Arrington that there were five to ten companies he interested in acquiring right now, but no acquisitions are imminent.

And on AOL’s overall success as a company considering its new strategy, “it’s a come back,” Armstrong explains. “We’re clear on what we are doing and no competitor who is going to get in the way of us.”

Tim Armstrong was appointed CEO and Chairman of AOL in March 2009. Before becoming the CEO of AOL, Armstrong presided over Google’s North American and Latin American advertising sales and...

Learn more

View the original article here

AOL Consolidates 53 Brands Down To 20 "Power Brands;" The Huffington Post Gets Bigger

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong likes to streamline things. And he is about to streamline AOL even more. Somewhat reversing the anti-portal strategy he inherited, he will start to consolidate 53 different content brands into 20 “power brands.” (Don’t worry, TechCrunch is still one of them).

“More and more stuff is moving towards well-known brands,” says Armstrong. “Unless human nature is going to totally change, the Internet is going to end up in a branded environment.”

The Huffington Post will be absorbing many of the former stand-alone AOL editorial sites, and in the process expanding from 28 sections to 36. Armstrong believes that simplifying AOL’s content portfolio will make it easier to sell ads and attract readers. Instead of “300 different things that sales people could sell, now they can focus their sales efforts against key categories.”

AOL’s celebrity site PopEater, for instance, will become HuffPost Celebrity. AOL News is already consolidated into the Huffington Post and Politics Daily has been rolled into HuffPost Politics. Kitchen Daily will become HuffPost Kitchen, Parent Dish will become HuffPost Parents, AOL Black Voices will become HuffPost Black Voices, and so on. HuffPost Music, HuffPost Small Business, and HuffPost Kids will all be new.

Outside of the Huffington Post, the power brands that will remain are:

AOL.com
Autoblog
Engadget
Joystiq
Mapquest
MMA Fighting
Moviefone
Patch
Stylelist
TechCrunch
TUAW
AOL Autos
AOL Healthy Living
AOL Industry
AOL Money & Finance,
AOL Music
AOL Search
AOL Travel
AOL Video

Meanwhile, AOL will be merging its two main homegrown content management systems: Blogsmith and the Huffington Post’s own custom CMS based on Movable Type. The new CMS will all be merged into the Huffington Post’s system, although a few big sites like Engadget will remain on Blogsmith for the time being. (TechCrunch will stay on WordPress).

All of these changes will take place over the summer.

Learn more

View the original article here

AOL is Here

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Revealed: The Huffington Post Wanted To Buy TechCrunch Back In The Day

Touchdown Called Back: Fleaflicker Founder Buys Back Fantasy Sports Site From AOL

The Devil Made Me Do It. AOL's Regrouped Advertising.com Is A $500 Million Business

AOL's Q1: Display Ad Revenues Finally Going Up, But Profits Are Down 86 Percent

Play, AOL's Android Music Sharing App, Hits 250,000 Downloads In Three Weeks

AOL Jumps To No. 2 Spot In comScore Online Video Rankings

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

AOL Authorizes $250 Million Stock Buyback Program After Share Price Falls Off A Cliff

As 2012 Election Season Ramps Up, AOL's Patch Will Launch 33 Sites In 'Key' Primary States

AOL’s Q2: Global Advertising Revenue Finally Up Again, Net Loss Narrows

Courtesy Of Moo, AOL's About.me Allows Users To Print Free Business Cards

Tim Armstrong Gives Some Project Devil Details

More Musical Chairs At AOL

Group Buying Site BuyWithMe Snags Patch.com EVP Away From AOL

AOL Editions Delivers A Daily Briefing To Your iPad

AOL Launches "Incredibly Easy" Video Chat Service Internally; We Launch It Externally

AOL Makes Fun Of Yahoo. And It's Actually Hilarious.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong: Paid Content Can Work

AOL Consolidates 53 Brands Down To 20 "Power Brands;" The Huffington Post Gets Bigger

About Me

Blog Archive