Zitat des Tages über AOL:
If you subscribe to any online service, whether it be AOL, Google, Yahoo, or the Huffington Post, have you noticed that you are forced to watch a seemingly endless ad before the video story appears about a news item that caught your eye? AOL and the Huffington Post are especially annoying.
I take my laptop with me on the road. When I come home, I log onto AOL, go to the Web site, and answer questions.
AOL had a very strong motive to create the appearance of high revenues for PurchasePro because the value of the warrants AOL had received in the deal depended on PurchasePro's performance.
I think the support of the other team at AOL and everybody's really shared passion and belief about this and - saying that some day everybody was going to be on line.
I think, from a standpoint of editorial, you know, AOL historically has played in a very deep way across many different verticals in the content space. Huffington Post adds a very large new dimension to that.
Put simply, my vision for AOL is to build the largest and most sophisticated global advertising network while we grow the size and engagement of our worldwide audience.
I think if the average person that uses AOL can't physically see the changes in the company, we've failed.
I continue to have a special pride and passion for AOL, and I strongly believe that AOL - once the leading Internet company in the world - can return to its past greatness.
What's happening internally is eventually what will take AOL back to being a growth company.
Most companies that are great at something - like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores - do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us) because they are afraid to hurt their initial business.
If AOL had ever ordered me to remove a piece of content from the site for any reason, I would have immediately written about it and disclosed the situation to our readers. And if I had ever ordered a writer to remove content, I would have expected that writer to have done the same to me.
I think international is a place that, actually, The Huffington Post and AOL have started to make moves in.
One of AOL's biggest assets is its brand. For people over 30 and, due to AOL Instant Messenger, even a lot of people under 30, AOL was their first real interaction with technology in a positive way.
Think of any news site on the web that sells subscriptions; AOL has four times as many people as the largest subscription service. We have people who pay to use our products and services, and they are heavily engaged in our content.
We're extremely excited about the assets that Yahoo has in the areas of Sports and Finance and Email and News. You match those up with AOL, and we've just made an exponential leap in capabilities here.
People often ask why I left CNN - I didn't like management. I liked my colleagues in the news gathering but the corporate culture that seized management when AOL came in (Steve Case and Gerry Levin) was disgusting.
I really do love social media. I've always been crazy about - even like, remember AOL chat rooms? I always loved message boards, and I was always interacting on the computer.
Yahoo is free, it's fast and it's Web-centric. AOL is slow, it costs money and requires proprietary software.
Because I do think - not just in building AOL - but just the world in which we live is a very confusing, rapidly changing world where technology has accelerated.
It's easy to make fun of AOL's pending purchase of HuffPo. Just like AOL's purchase of TimeWarner, here we have a new media company - Huffington Post - fooling an old media company, AOL, into overpaying for something that has already peaked.
When I was at AOL, I was always on the web media side while much of the company was focused on the ISP business. We focused on big categories like celebrities and sports, and we created brands around that category like AOL Celebrities, AOL Movies and Fanhouse.
I definitely had an AOL account when I was 14, but I don't remember what my screen name was.
I think it took us nine years to get one million subscribers to AOL, and then in the next nine years we went from one million to 35 million.
AOL was a roller coaster ride. I was lucky and privileged to be a part of it, both the ups and the downs.
We have people who pay to use our products and services, and they are heavily engaged in our content. If you erase the brand perceptions of AOL, and consider that people pay to use our properties, you would probably consider this one of the most valuable audiences on the Internet.
Our independence from AOL was so important to me that I negotiated an extremely odd provision in our purchase agreement that allowed me to disclose confidential information about AOL. It was their job never to give me that information. It was not my job to protect it in any way.
I'm a person who likes to tackle challenges. Google was a challenge when I got there. I think AOL's a challenge. The way we run the company is a very team-focused environment.
Social media is not the same in 2013 as it was in 2003 - or even 2008 or 2011. You didn't carry around AOL chat in your pocket or look at it when you were in class.
While a lot of what is on Facebook is a better amalgam of what AOL, Yahoo, Amazon, and other Web pioneers introduced long ago, with a nice dash of connection and really identified community, this kind of thing is not a new idea.
Remember when those CD-ROMs from AOL came in the mail almost every day? The company was considered ubiquitous, invincible. Former AOL CEO Steve Case was no less a genius than Mark Zuckerberg.
AOL Instant Messenger was a big thing back in the day, where girls would get on it and make fun of me. There was a certain girl, and she wanted to make me feel bad.
The fact of the matter is that the true hits of AOL have always been its easy-to-use services, such as AIM, email, and Buddy Lists.
Having spent two years at AOL, I would love to be able to go back to that industry knowing what I know, and I think I would be able to help the traditional media side to better understand what is coming at them, how to deal with it.
