November 19, 2009

AOL to Nix 2,500 Jobs; Asks for Volunteers

AOL is looking to cut 2,500 jobs. Before they go through the tough choice of choosing who to let go, they're asking if anyone wants to volunteer to get the axe.

Oh, how I've been there and oh, how this sucks for AOL-ers. Goodbye, productivity. Hello, everyone trying to figure out if they're safe.

At least the process seems to have a defined endpoint. AOL says they expect to incur $200 million in costs from "re-structuring" and that those costs will incur before the December 9 spinoff date.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 17, 2009

AOL Spinoff to Occur on December 9, 2009

Last spring, Time Warner announced that it would spin off AOL as an independent company. The announcement was made shortly after hiring Tim Armstrong away from Google as President. This fall, they've named members to the future Board of Directors and hired key financial executives needed to run the publicly traded company.

Now, we know that AOL's independence day is December 9, 2009. All Time Warner stockholders as of 5pm on November 27, 2009 will receive 1 AOL share for every 11 shares of Time Warner.

AOL has openly talked about their focus on content, in ways reminiscent of Yahoo! after striking a deal with Microsoft. AOL currently relies on Google for their search, and there's no sign of that changing anytime soon.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 6, 2009

AOL Completes Financial Team, Names Additional Board Member in Advance

In preparation for being spun off from Time Warner, AOL has hired executives to their financial team and announced one additional board member.

Here's a list of the financial execs:

Mike Suffredini - Vice President and Treasurer
Eoin Ryan - Vice President of Investor Relations
Don Neff, currently a Senior Vice President of Finance, will become Senior Vice President of Internal Audit.
Ned Brody - rejoining the company as Executive Vice President of Paid Services

Meanwhile, Susan Lyne, Chief Executive Officer of the online luxury retailer Gilt Groupe, Inc. has been named to the Board of Directors. Last week, AOL named nine board members for the post-separation operations.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 26, 2009

AOL Names Nine Board Members for Post-Time Warner Separation

Once AOL is spinned off from Time Warner, it will require a Board of Directors. Today, nine members were named. They are:

Richard L. Dalzell made a name for himself at Amazon, where he started held a variety of executive-level roles from 1997 until 2007. Prior to Amazon, Dalzell was VP of Information Systems at Walmart. Karen E. Dykstra is a partner at Plainfield Asset Management LLC, and has been COO and CFO of Plainfield Direct Inc. since 2006. Plainfield manages investment capital for institutions and high net worth individuals. Prior to joining Plainfield, Dykstra was the CFO of Automatic Data Processing, Inc. Dykstra serves on the boards of Plainfield Direct Inc., Gartner, Inc. and Crane Co. William R. Hambrecht founded and has been Chairman and CEO of WR Hambrecht + Co since 1998. WR Hambrecht + Co is a financial services firm specializing in Internet and auction processes and tech company underwriting and advisory services. Before that, Hambrecht co-founded Hambrecht & Quist. Hambrecht is a co-founder of the United Football League, which premiered in October 2009. Hambrecht currently serves on the board of Motorola, Inc. Patricia E. Mitchell has served as President and CEO of The Paley Center for Media, a non-profit cultural institution, since 2006. Before that, Mitchell was President and CEO of the Public Broadcasting Service from 2000 to 2006. For more than two decades, she was an award-winning journalist and producer. She has served as President of Time Inc. Television and CNN Productions, and was a partner in an independent production company which focused on women's programming. Mitchell serves on the board of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Michael K. Powell was Chairman of the FCC from 2001 to 2005 and has also served as the Chief of Staff of the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division. Since his FCC gig, Powell has served as a Senior Advisor to Providence Equity Partners, a private equity firm focused on media, entertainment, communications and information investments, since 2005. Currently, Powell is Chairman of the MK Powell Group, a tech and media communications consultancy. Previously, Powell was an associate with the law firm of O'Melveny & Myers LLP. Powell serves on the boards of Cisco Systems, Inc. and Education Management Corporation. He was also named Chairman of NTT DoCoMo's 5th U.S. Advisory Board. Fredric G. Reynolds served in many executive-level roles at CBS and Viacom from 1994 until he retired in August 2009. Reynolds serves on the board of Kraft Foods Inc. James R. Stengel has been President and CEO of The Jim Stengel Company, LLC, a think tank and consulting firm, since 2008. Stengel is also currently an adjunct marketing professor at UCLA's Anderson School of Management. Stengel was at at Procter & Gamble from 1983 to 2008. Stengel serves on the board of Motorola, Inc. James A. Wiatt has been an independent consultant since June 2009. Wiatt served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the William Morris Agency from 1999 until 2009. Before joining WMA, Wiatt was Co-Chairman and Co-CEO of International Creative Management, a talent management company. A graduate of the USC, Wiatt is a member of the Board of Councilors of the USC School of Cinematic Arts, former Chairman and current member of the Board of the Los Angeles Police Foundation, and on the Board of Directors of the Music Center of Los Angeles.

"AOL is very fortunate to have an exceptional group of proven leaders to serve on our board of directors. AOL is on a mission to help create the future of media and content and the AOL Board will play a central part in helping us focus the strategy and also operate the company with the highest ethical standards," said AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. "These individuals bring independent judgment and a dedication to building shareholder value, and they will be a tremendous resource for our company, our employees, and our future."

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 20, 2009

AOL's Cahall Appointed to New Virginia Tech Board

The state of Viriginia has created a new technology board called the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Investment Authority (IEIA). The thirteen-member board will consist of 12 citizen members and the state's Secretary of Technology. Of the 12 citizen members, three will be presidents of state higher-education institutions, three each appointed by the governor, state senate and state house. AOL's Chief Technology Officer, Ted Cahall, has received one of the three state senate appointments.

"The IEIA is an important new organization that will help enhance Virginia's role as a world technology leader, and I'm honored to have been selected to be a part of this effort," said Cahall. "I look forward to working with the distinguished group of politicians and citizens on the IEIA to support technology and innovation in the Commonwealth."

AOL was founded in Northern Virginia in 1985.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 5:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 15, 2009

Bing's Growth Slows, Google Recoups Losses in comScore September 2009 Report

comScore has released their search engine share report for September 2009 and we're seeing yet another twist in the "Can Bing catch up with Google?" saga. You may remember that Bing has been on quite a roll since launch gaining over 1 percentage point, with Google and Yahoo! trading off the losses.

Well, the tides began to turn last month, with Google regaining 0.3% of its loss and Bing gaining another 0.1% in share, which is not the rate of growth they have been experiencing. This time, Yahoo! suffered the losses with a 0.5% decline. Ask.com and AOL held steady.

Another interesting tidbit is YouTube's continued growth and how it compares to search. Greg Jarboe already provided you with the scoop on how more YouTube videos were watched in August than searches conducted in September. Be sure to read his post because this is a phenomenon to watch for sure.

Also, read up on Promoted Videos, which is essentially paid search for YouTube. You can now purchase Promoted Videos in AdWords, which will appear in the search results over at YouTube.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

October 8, 2009

MapQuest Embeddable Sharing Map; Launches Voice-Guided iPhone App

MapQuest has a couple of big announcements this week. First up, their new GeoRSS Embeddable Maps allow web publishers to add maps to their sites that feature locations they wish to share. Let's say you have a blog about coffee. Perhaps you create a map sharing your favorite local coffee shops.

The GeoRSS Embeddable Maps work with online services that provide a feed of location data. Such services include sites like Flickr, Yelp, Brightkite or When.com.

Next up is a new iPhone app. The app features voice-guided, turn-by-turn directions. The app also optimizes routes, taking into account things like traffic and construction.

It's not cheap compared to most apps, but compared to other navigation apps (or buying a GPS gadget), it's a good deal. After a 14-day trial for 99 cents, you'll have to shell out $3.99 a month, $9.99 for three months, or $29.99 for three months.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 30, 2009

Another Ex-Googler Heads to AOL

AOL has tapped Shashi Seth as Senior Vice President of Global Advertising Products. Seth was formerly with Cooliris and before that was at Google. Prior to leaving Google, he was charged with the difficult task of developing monetization strategies for YouTube. Seth previously was the Product Lead for Web Search at Google.

Seth also spent time at eBay, where he managed APIs & Platform. Before that, he launched Gap's online stores. Seth began his career at NASA.

"Shashi is unmatched in the industry as an innovator with an outstanding track record of developing new and better ways to serve advertisers on the Web," said Jeff Levick, President of Global Advertising and Strategy at AOL. "As we move forward on our strategy of becoming the world's largest provider of display advertising, Shashi will play a critical role in creating the best products in the business for our advertising partners."

Seth is the latest of the fresh talent to head to AOL. Earlier this year, Tim Armstrong left Google to head up the struggling internet company. A few weeks ago, news came that ex-Yahoo! Brad Garlinghouse of "Peanut Butter Manifesto" fame is joining AOL as well.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 8, 2009

Ex-Yahoo! and Author of 'Peanut Butter Manifesto' Brad Garlinghouse Heads to AOL

In 2006, Brad Garlinghouse made waves at Yahoo! by releasing the "Peanut Butter Manifesto," which outlined a bunch of organizational and administrative problems he felt Yahoo! had. As senior vice president at the time, he felt Yahoo! was spread thin and needed focus, leadership, and accountability.

During the turbulence that accompanied the post-Microsoft acquisition rejection, Garlinghouse left Yahoo!

Now, he's been tapped to run Internet and mobile communications at AOL. He'll be based in Silicon Valley.

Garlinghouse isn't the only big name to join AOL. Tim Armstrong left Google to run AOL earlier this year.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 5, 2009

AOL Adds 'Real-Time Topics' to Home Page

AOL is the latest to get into the "real-time" publishing game. They've added Real-Time Topics to each section of news on their homepage.

When you click on a link in the Real-Time Topics section, it will take you to Love.com, a site that tracks buzz and hot stories.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 3:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

July 29, 2009

Stephane Panier Named by AOL as Global Head of Bebo

To fill the top position of global operations at Bebo, AOL (which acquired the social network last year), promoted from within. VP and COO Stephane Panier will now oversee advancing the social network worldwide.

"Stephane is a proven strategist and operator with executive experience from some of the world's leading brands and businesses," said Brod. "He is the ideal leader to build on Bebo's existing successes, to chart a course for its future, and to execute against that vision."

Prior to joining Bebo this past January, Panier worked at Google for six years, holding upper level management positions in Finance and Operations. Before the Google stint, Panier was a management consultant for Booz & Company where he focused on energy and hi-tech.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

AOL Advertising Revenue Down by 21% in Q2 2009

AOL parent company Time Warner released its quarterly earnings this morning and the news is not pretty.

Revenue came in at $804 million, a decrease of 24% over Q2 2008, which brought in $1.06 billion. The decline was almost evenly split among online advertising ($111 million, a 21% decrease) and internet access subscriptions ($135 million, a 27% decrease).

Time Warner has spent $20 million so far in the process of prepping AOL to become a separate, independent company. Earlier this week, Time Warner bought back Google's 5% stake in AOL for $283 million, a big dip from Google's original $1 billion investment back in 2005.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 7:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 28, 2009

Time Warner Buys Back Google's 5% Stake in AOL

When the Time Warner board voted in late May to spin off AOL, buying back Google's 5% stake in the company would be a prerequisite for the sale. This week, Time Warner did just that.

The return on investment, however, was not so hot. Google invested $1 billion in 2005 to acquired the 5% stake. They only got back $283 million.

Other statements made in the filing are quite telling of the possibilities for AOL's future. Google currently powers the search on AOL (including paid search). That will be in place until December 19, 2010, but they're leaving open the possibility of ditching Google after that.

They may then strike up an agreement with an alternate search engine, such as Yahoo! or Microsoft, or Microhoo. Though, with former Google exec Tim Armstrong now running things at AOL, I'd prefer to see AOL go for broke and develop their own search engine.

AOL also plans to maintain some licensing agreements with Time Warner.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 8, 2009

Ex-Bebo Chief Kate Burns to Head Up AOL European Sales

Kate Burns has been tapped by AOL to lead its European Sales division. Burns formerly ran social network Bebo, which was acquired by AOL last year. Prior to that Burns spent time at Adlink and Google UK.

"AOL has a solid foundation in Europe, with a strong Web presence in many countries and a leading advertising network, and I'm looking forward to working with my colleagues and with AOL's partners to build on this foundation," said Burns.

Burns will report to AOL Global Advertising and Strategy President Jeff Levick

"Europe is key to realizing our mission of being the largest global platform for online display advertising. Kate is the right person to build our European management sales team and lead this effort," said Levick. "Kate is a well recognized and highly respected leader in Europe who has the talent, energy and determination to scale our European operations and deliver on this strategy."

AOL maintains ad operations in nine European countries including Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the UK.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 30, 2009

AOL Canada Relaunches Homepage, Makes You Thirsty for Pepsi

AOL Canada has relaunched their homepage and in case you couldn't tell, Pepsi has bought some advertising (Click on image to enlarge):

The relaunch is based on the update of the AOL.com homepage in the U.S last fall. That relaunch has been good to AOL, with increases of 23% in unique visitors, 34% in total page views and 61% in total minutes consumed year over year, according to comScore's Media Matrix for May 2009.

"The launch of the new AOL Canada portal follows the tremendous successes we've experienced in both the U.S. and the UK, enabling exciting new opportunities for the Canadian market," said Edward Kwan, Senior Director of AOL Canada. "In terms of advertising, Platform-A Canada will now have the capability to expand its reach across more relevant and media-rich content and channels."

The new AOL.ca features the ability to check mail from a variety of providers (AOL, GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail) as well as the opportunity to update social networks including Facebook, Twitter, AOL-owned Bebo, and MySpace. AOL's popular instant messaging client, AIM, is also included.

"With today's Internet ever-expanding and consumers engaging in multiple social networking platforms, it is essential that their experience on the Web is both personalized and integrated," said Kwan.

Additional AOL.ca features include:

Customized backgrounds with multiple new designs from which to choose;
Ability to add any customized links to the homepage so users can more easily access their most frequently visited sites;
Users can drag and drop to reorder channel navigation to suit personal preferences;
Users can add RSS feeds and personalized categories to get content from their preferred external sites.

What do you think of the new AOL.ca? Share your first impressions in the comments below.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 25, 2009

Video Search Site Truveo Relaunches: How to Leverage Your Brand

Truveo, the video search site acquired by AOL a few years back, has relaunched. Before we get into the details, let's be clear: Truveo is not a YouTube wannabe. Their focus is purely on indexing video around the web.

So, now that we have that settled, let's take a look at what's changed and then how you can incorporate this fast-growing site into your online marketing and PR efforts.

First up, here's the before and after:

Before

After

As you can see, they've made the focus on search quite obvious.

The results page is laid out in three columns. On the left hand side is a list of sites where results have been indexed. In the middle are the video results, with tabs to sort by popularity and other factors. There are suggestions for search refinement where applicable. On the right is a display ad box with a focus on a particular channel underneath.

But looking at the results, where is the opportunity for search marketers? There's the display ad box, but no sponsored listings.

Leveraging Truveo will instead involve public relations and viral marketing. Since many of the sites that Truveo indexes are news sites, earned media is key. Additionally, Truveo tracks popular videos shared via Twitter, so word of mouth and viral social media marketing can help with getting visibility on Truveo as well.

The nice thing about those strategies is that the ultimate visibility of successful marketing and PR campaigns will be widespread. Generally, you'll see a lift in other channels too, if you can manage to get a big media site to cover you. Think of the links - that will be natural! - and the effect they'll have on organic results!

But why would you focus such intent efforts on Truveo. You've never even heard of Truveo. Well, you, my friend are getting closer to being alone in that sentiment as the months roll by.

May was a huge month for Truveo, according to President Pete Kocks. He's hoping that the new site reflects the video search focus while resonating with internet users worldwide.

"With the launch of the new Truveo.com, we are showcasing the breadth of content discoverable in our search engine," said Pete Kocks, President of Truveo and Vice President of AOL. "With thousands of channels and TV shows in our index, Truveo has long been recognized as a leader in video search technology, and today we are building on that reputation with an improved experience that makes discovering and sharing video content even easier and more personalized."

That video content is highly popular in international locations. Because certain locales in Europe, the Middle East and South America have access to better bandwidth and because of the extent of Truveo's video indexing, the site is more easily consumed internationally.

As a result, it comes as no surprise that the relaunch comes with the announcement of two partners: Univision and Tiscali Italia. Both will leverage Truveo's API to deliver video search on their sites.

Speaking of the API, it fuels the video search on all of AOL's sites. Considering the extent to which Truveo indexes video content, third party developers would be wise to incorporate the API to provide a nice value add to any site.

Truveo also has an iPhone app as well as a site optimized for mobile web surfers. They're certainly on the ball and their increasing traffic is showing that they're offering something that internet users really want: comprehensive video search.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

June 16, 2009

MapQuest Launches iPhone App

AOL-owned MapQuest has been available as a free application for Blackberry users and now iPhone users are getting the goods as well. While MapQuest has been available on the mobile web, apps are usually faster and more user-friendly.

One of the highlights of the app is a "carousel" of options shown at the bottom of a map. It offers icons for things like gas stations and hotels. Click on an icon and find nearby locations of the selected category.

Below is a map of an area in north/west Raleigh. The icon for "coffee" has been selected.

The carousel is easy to use and quite convenient. You can select multiple categories to display and simply click again to stop showing a category. It will only show what's in the Map View, so zoom in or out to expand or decrease the locations shown on your screen.

The app, however, needs a lot of work in the search department. The app consistently returns a "No Search Results Found" button - for everything from "Cedar Point" to "Washington Monument" to "Las Vegas."

You also need to sign into an account if you want to access "My Places" features. Registering and signing into accounts via mobile phone is a pain.

Right now, the app is perfect for finding nearby coffee, hotels, traffic conditions, etc. Hopefully in the future we'll see better search and more functions without needing a MapQuest account.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 12, 2009

AOL Goes for Local with the Acquisition of Patch and Going

AOL is making local a core part of their business model. And it's a worthy goal. Local searches grew 58% in 2008 and $103 billion will be spent on local advertising (both online and off) this year.

Still, the local search niche has a bit of an identity crisis. We've seen prospective progress such as CitySquares, the newly launched Bing, and the mobile search space. Now, AOL seeks to help consolidate the space with the acquisition of two local content providers: Patch and Going.

Patch is a local news and information provider while Going is centered more around events that locals can discover and share. Of course, AOL already owns one of the most popular online mapping resources in MapQuest.

The combination of search, local and mapping could be the perfect storm for AOL, if new CEO Tim Armstrong has his way.

"Local remains one of the most disaggregated experiences on the Web today -- there's a lot of information out there but simply no way for consumers to find it quickly and easily," said Tim Armstrong, AOL's Chairman and CEO. "It's a space that's prime for innovation and an area where AOL has a significant audience and a valuable mapping service in MapQuest."

Of course, Armstrong came to AOL from Google, a company known for innovation in search.

"Going forward, local will be a core area of focus and investment for AOL," said Armstrong. "The acquisitions of Patch and Going will help us build out our local network further with excellent local services that enable people to stay better informed about what's going on in their neighborhood."

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

May 28, 2009

Time Warner Board Approves Plans to Spinoff AOL

The Time Warner Board has voted and AOL will be spun off into an independent company. Right now, Time Warner owns 95% of AOL and Google owns the other 5%. Time Warner plans to buy back the 5% Google stake in the third quarter of 2009 before it spins off AOL.

Brand spankin' new AOL CEO (and former Google VP) Tim Armstrong had this to say:

This will be a great opportunity for AOL, our employees and our partners. Becoming a standalone public company positions AOL to strengthen its core businesses, deliver new and innovative products and services, and enhance our strategic options. We play in a very competitive landscape and will be using our new status to retain and attract top talent. Although we have a tremendous amount of work to do, we have a global brand, a committed team of people, and a passion for the future of the Web.

AOL is made up of media and internet access services. Last year, there was talk of splitting those two divisions into two companies, but thus far, nothing has come of it.

Despite AOL's relatively small chunk of the search market (compared to Google), it's Platform-A online ad network is highly successful, consistently ranking at the top of comScore's online ad rankings and reaching 91% of the U.S. internet audience.

How do you think AOL will fare on its own? Share your predictions in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 19, 2009

MapQuest Now Optimized for Android

One of the most popular online mapping tools is now optimized for Android, Google's mobile operating system. AOL-owned MapQuest has announced that it's now optimized for Android and users of the new 1.5 version will have access to draggable maps.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 12, 2009

AOL Launches Search Toolbar

AOL has released a new search toolbar. It's available for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Flock. The toolbar is dark blue and sort of recedes into the browser, which makes it stand out against other toolbars.

Once the toolbar is installed, the browser relaunches with options for adding buttons to the toolbar. There's a nice selection from social media, news sites, shopping sites, etc.

One thing I did not like is that the installation closed Firefox without prompting me if I wanted all my tabs relaunched. I did. They did not reappear again. On a heavy news day, where a blogger has several tabs open, this would have been a bit of a nightmare. Thankfully, today has been on the light side.

Here's a look at the toolbar:

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

May 11, 2009

Pop Culture and Geography Combine in AOL's New 'Where It's At'

AOL has launched a new mapping concept designed to answer those probing geographical pop culture questions such as "Where is the real Hotel California?" There are a few different ways to browse the site. One is to use the info box hovering over the map. Simply click "Next Spot" and be taken on a whirlwind tour of random pop culture locales.

On the right side is a list of topics by which you can narrow your interest. Choose from topics or locations.

Below the fold are the most recent spots added, editor's picks, and an option to submit a spot.

At the time of this post, I couldn't get the site to load the map function in Firefox, an issue I trust will be resolved soon enough.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 30, 2009

Jeff Levick Named Head of AOL Global Advertising and Strategy

In a press release this morning, AOL announced that Jeff Levick will join the company as President, Global Advertising and Strategy.

In this new and expanded role, Levick will be responsible for Platform-A, AOL's advertising business, as well as developing global revenue strategies. Levick comes to AOL from Google, where he was most recently VP of Industry Development and Marketing, The Americas. He will report directly to AOL Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong.

As a result of this change, Greg Coleman will be leaving Platform-A, where he has served as President since early February 2009.

Levick will officially join AOL in the coming weeks. At Google, he was responsible for business marketing activities for the Americas as well as sales development and strategy for all of the vertical industries covered by Google's Americas sales organization. He joined Google in 2001 and has held various executive management positions in the company's advertising sales organization in both North America and Europe.

Prior to joining Google, Levick served as a corporate attorney with a specialty in mergers and acquisitions at the international law firm of Katten Muchin Rosenman, and held roles at various online ventures in Chicago. He currently serves on the board of directors of Helium.com, the advisory board of the College of Communications at DePaul University, and as a member of the SES advisory board.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 29, 2009

AOL Ad Revenues Drop 20% in Q1 2009

Time Warner, parent company of AOL, has reported their first quarter earnings for 2009 and the news isn't great for AOL. Ad revenues have dropped 20% or $109 million. The losses largely contributed to the 7% decline parent company Time Warner experienced overall.

The losses added to Time Warner's desire to rid itself of AOL.

"With our separation of Time Warner Cable, Time Warner has become a more content-focused company. We're also working to determine the right ownership structure for AOL," said Time Warner Chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes. "With our powerful brands, industry-leading scale, track record of innovation, heightened focus on efficiency and strong balance sheet, I'm confident that we'll continue to make progress toward our key long-term goals - to be the world's leading content company and improve returns to our stockholders."

After shopping itself to potential buyers, Time Warner appears to be posed to spin off the struggling internet company. Time Warner has notified Google of its intent to purchase their 5% stock in AOL. AOL recently hired Tim Armstrong, former Google Senior Vice President, as CEO.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 15, 2009

Online Map Wars: Google Passes MapQuest Just Before Easter

Hitwise has release new dating showing Google Maps surpassing MapQuest the week ending in Easter weekend.

MapQuest visitors remain on the site longer at 10 minutes 51 seconds compared to Google Maps' 7 minutes 24 seconds. But could that mean Google Maps users are finding what they want faster? Or are people enjoying MapQuest's interactive features more?

Tell us what you think in the comments below.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

April 8, 2009

AOL's Platform-A Promotes Mark Ellis to EVP of Sales

AOL Platform-A has been going through some big management changes. Recently, they named ex-Googler Tim Armstrong as their CEO.

Today, AOL is announcing that they are promoting from within. Mark Ellis has been promoted from senior vice president of Vertical and Product Sales to executive vice president of Sales.

"One of our key areas of focus at Platform-A is to build the best ad sales team in the business, and in his years with AOL and Platform-A, Mark has proved himself as best qualified to achieve that," said Platform-A resident Greg Coleman. "Mark's knowledge of the industry, his commitment to clients, and his relations with leaders in the industry is unequaled. He also has a proven track record - starting with his success in reinvigorating our automotive relationships in Detroit. Platform-A has the largest scale and the best technologies in the business. And with the improvements we're making to our sales team, we will be able to more effectively bring this truly unmatched offer to advertisers looking to deliver their key marketing messages online."

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 18, 2009

Dennis Woodside Tapped to Replace Tim Armstrong at Google

Dennis Woodside has been tapped to replace Tim Armstrong at Google. Woodside was formerly Google's VP of U.K., Benelux, and Ireland. Armstrong was Sr. VP and based in New York.

Last week, AOL announced that Armstrong had been selected as their new CEO. Armstrong will take over for Randy Falco. AOL is owned by parent company Time Warner.

It's no secret that AOL needs new direction. The company spent last year of attempting to strike some kind of merger or acquisition with Microsoft and/or Yahoo!

Time Warner also decided to split AOL into two: one part media and one part internet access. Their original internet access business has been flailing lately due to the popularity of cable and DSL subscriptions.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 17, 2009

AOL Completes Platform-A Transformation from DoubleClick to ADTECH

AOL has announced the completion of transitioning from providing offerings via DoubleClick to providing full service offerings via ADTECH. AOL acquired ADTECH in 2007. DoubleClick was acquired by Google last year, after the European Union approved the merger. Google owns a 5% stake in AOL and Google Sr. VP Tim Armstrong was recently tapped to be AOL's CEO. Platform-A reaches 91% of the U.S. internet audience.

"The ad serving switch from DoubleClick to ADTECH is a major milestone for Platform-A and our advertising partners. Acquiring ADTECH was a smart, strategic move that saves the company millions of dollars each year and allows us to more effectively serve display, video, and mobile campaigns across the MediaGlow properties and our third-party networks," said Greg Coleman, President of Platform-A. "In January, Platform-A reached more than 174 million unique visitors*, and now that we've switched our ad serving to ADTECH, we're in a stronger position to help advertisers reach those consumers more efficiently and build brands that perform online."

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 5:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 13, 2009

Google's Tim Armstrong Named Chairman and CEO of AOL

Google Senior Vice President Tim Armstrong has been tapped to replace Randy Falco as Chairman and CEO of AOL.

"Tim is the right executive to move AOL into the next phase of its evolution. At Google, Armstrong helped build one of the most successful media teams in the history of the Internet -- helping to make Google the most popular online search advertising platform in the world for direct and brand marketers," said Jeff Bewkes, Chairman and CEO of Time Warner, parent company of AOL. "He's an advertising pioneer with a stellar reputation and proven track record. We are privileged to have him preside over AOL as its audience and programming businesses continue to grow and its advertising platform expands globally. He'll also be helpful in helping Time Warner determine the optimal structure for AOL."

Armstrong has been with Google since 2000. He led sales efforts in the U.S. and Latin America. Google owns a 5% stake in AOL.

"I'm very excited about the opportunities presented in leading AOL. AOL has a wide-ranging set of assets and audience," said Armstrong. "The company is well positioned to enhance those assets into a larger share of the Internet audience and advertiser communities. AOL and Google have been partners for years and I look forward to collaborating with Jeff Bewkes and his team as we explore the right structure and future for AOL."

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 6, 2009

AOL Turns on One Clicks for Pro Athletes

If you've ever wanted to look up a pro athlete's stats, you know it can take several clicks to find the information you're looking for. Now, AOL is making stat-finding easier by turning on One Clicks for pro athletes.

One Clicks puts answers directly in the search results. Say, for example, you wanted to check on NHL player Erik Cole's stats with the Edmonton Oilers. He's just this week been traded back to the Carolina Hurricanes and you want to know if it's going to benefit the 2006 Stanley Cup Champions.

Search AOL for Erik Cole and here's what you get:

Notice the One Clicks results below the paid results. (Hopefully that logo will get updated to show the Hurricanes logo anyday now).

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

March 3, 2009

MapQuest Launches On-Map Search Tool: Find Coffee On Your Route

MapQuest has enhanced its Business Locator with an On-Map Search Tool. The tool helps users find businesses along routes they plan with MapQuest. This will help the coffee-obsessed such as myself find coffee stops along their travel routes.

Below is a screenshot of a route from Raleigh, NC to Durham, NC. Notice the icon toolbar on the top right side. You can scroll for different search categories such as groceries and accommodations.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 2, 2009

AOL Partners with Grocery Shopping Network for Food Niche

AOL is partnering with the Grocery Shopping Network for its Food portal. Users will be able to search UCook.com's 65,000 recipes; wine pairings; and cooking-related video content. 4.7 million visitors view AOL Food per month.

"AOL Food is excited to partner with the Grocery Shopping Network to provide consumers a solid, reliable and searchable recipe database," said Tanya Mancini, editorial director, AOL Living. "AOL Food chose GSN's UCook.com because of the quality of the recipes and video content. The variety of recipes that UCook.com provides is so vast and vibrant that we really feel our consumers will have an enjoyable experience as they find everything from home-style American cooking to international fare."

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

February 3, 2009

Greg Coleman Named President of AOL's Platform-A

AOL has named Greg Coleman as President of Platform-A, their display advertising network. Coleman previously served as search and ad targeting startup, President and CEO of NetSeer. Prior to that, Coleman was Executive Vice President of Global Sales at Yahoo! Coleman also worked in magazine publishing.

“Greg Coleman is perfectly suited to build on the foundation we created at Platform-A and drive branded display sales across our fast-growing MediaGlow programming network,” said Randy Falco, AOL Chairman and CEO. “Greg’s a seasoned sales pro who understands that online brand building is the next frontier in digital advertising, and that whoever can deliver marketers measurably improved branding online will be positioned for long-term success. I’m confident Greg will help us create branding solutions that leverage the strong success of MediaGlow and the upcoming launches at People Networks.”

Coleman replaces Lynda Clarizio, who came to AOL through the Advertising.com acquisition. Clarizio was President of Advertising.com.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 28, 2009

AOL to Cut 10% of Its Workforce

AOL will cut 10% of its workforce, according to Kara Swisher. That amounts to 700 employees.

The cuts will attempt to focus efforts in New York City, part of a gradual attempt to headquarter there. That will mean consolidation in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, and the DC suburb of Dulles, site of the original HQ. It will also scaled down international business, which hasn't served them well.

Last year, parent company Time Warner announced that it would split AOL into two: one part internet access and one part search/media. Time Warner has been attempting to forge a merger or sale with Yahoo for nearly a year now.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 15, 2008

AOL.com Homepage Ad, Traffic, and Time Spent on Site Stats Up Since Relaunch

AOL has some good news regarding their homepage since they relaunched in late October.

The click-through rate for the primary 300x250 ad banner increased 30% in November. Unique visitors and daily visitors grew by 13% and the minutes spent on the page increased by 29%.

“This week, the new homepage was rolled out to all AOL.com users, so we anticipate that our consumer usage numbers will continue to grow in the coming year,” said Lynda Clarizio, President of Platform-A. “Even in a tough economy, advertisers are finding ways to maximize their returns on investment, and our AOL.com homepage ad units have proven that consumers will respond positively to brand messaging within a new, highly customized consumer environment.”

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 12, 2008

Bebo Launches Social Inbox to Aggregate Feeds from Your Networks

Social network Bebo is getting in the aggregation game. Their new Social Inbox is an attempt at a FriendFeed-like feature that culls feeds from your Twitter, Flickr, Del.icio.us, YouTube, and AIM accounts, among others, so you can manage your online social life all in one place. You can also check email accounts from Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail and others.

"People want the ability to stay in-touch with their contacts in real-time wherever their friends may be across the Web. The current fragmented social networking environment makes keeping up-to-date with others increasingly difficult. Bebo's new Social Inbox is our first step in solving this problem," said Joanna Shields, President, AOL People Networks. "By opening up our network to the most popular sites and allowing our users to pull in the best of the Internet, we are creating an environment where everyone can easily and effectively manage their online lives, no matter where the individual pieces reside."

Bebo and social aggregator SocialThing were both acquired by AOL this year.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 4, 2008

AOL Releases Top Searches for 2008

In the ongoing end of year list season, AOL has released its top searches for 2008. Unlike Yahoo and Ask.com, AOL inexplicably only released the top searches for select niches, not a top 10 list of overall searches. Nevertheless, here they are:

‘American Idol' - Top TV & Movies
NASCAR - Top Sports
Britney Spears - Top Celebrity
Flat Belly Diet - Top Health
iPhone - Top Shopping
Jonas Brothers - Top Musician
Presidential Election - Top News

To see the full lists, click here.

All I have to say is: Seriously, people - Britney Spears!!?!?

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 20, 2008

MapQuest Incorporates Personalization Feature

MapQuest is bringing personalization into their online and mobile mapping offering. Dubbed My MapQuest, the feature lets users save routes and maps, giving them access later whenever they need it.

My MapQuest pages can be created through an AOL account or an OpenID account. You can set language and mileage preferences as well as store mobile numbers and addresses.

The feature will be rolled out to MQ4M (MapQuest for Mobile) for Blackberry soon. Initial Blackberry models will include AT&T BlackBerry Bold, Verizon BlackBerry 8830 and 8330, and T-Mobile BlackBerry 8300, 8800 and 8820.

“The launch of My MapQuest continues MapQuest's commitment to innovation and improving the user's experience. Our studies have shown that our customers want a personalization feature that includes the ability to save previously searched addresses,” said Christian Dwyer, Senior Vice President and GM, MapQuest. “Giving our users the ability to save not just maps but also their routes sets us apart and extends MapQuest's commitment to offering users choice and flexibility.”

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 3, 2008

AOL Launches Online Event Guide, When.com

AOL has launched an online events guide, When.com, which is powered by Zvents. The site is very reminiscent of Upcoming.org, which is owned by Yahoo.

Mapping for events is supplied by AOL's MapQuest and events can also be bookmarked to AOL, Google, Outlook or Yahoo Calendar.

“Whether you're looking for events that are suitable for the whole family, something to do on a Friday night or ways to entertain out of town guests, when.com makes it easy for users to find where to go and what to do in their community or places they are traveling to,” said Chris Spanos, General Manager of AOL Local and Search Verticals. “When.com is also a powerful way for event organizers and advertisers to reach and connect with a targeted audience by providing them the ability to quickly and easily submit their events right from the when.com homepage.”

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 30, 2008

New AOL.com Launches; Due Diligence on Yahoo Merger Reported

When I read that AOL.com launched a new homepage, I naturally hopped on over there to see what the new look, um, looked like. It looked the same, except with dark blue trim and web 2.0 stripes in the background for good measure.

Otherwise, it still holds the same basic design as....Yahoo. I then came across a story by Reuters which says Yahoo and AOL are conducting "due diligence" on a possible (probable?) merger by the two web companies. I was not at all surprised.

Something else to know about the new AOL is that it incorporates a new social element. What the new feature allows you to do is sign into social networks like Facebook and Bebo directly from the homepage.This is a smart move and will blend nicely with Yahoo's push toward open source should the merger occur.

“As the Web becomes more fragmented, consumers want choice and relevance in their Web experiences. AOL.com is the first traditional big portal to offer access to popular social networking sites all in one place,” said Bill Wilson, Executive Vice President, AOL Programming. “Now consumers can connect with their numerous networks and information sources all from AOL.com. We have already seen success by opening up AOL.com to other e-mail providers. We will continue to enhance the appeal of our portal with the changes we are making today by adding more relevant programming, customization opportunities, greater integration of third party content, improved design and access to social networks directly from AOL.com."

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

October 29, 2008

MapQuest Updates Widget and Local Content

MapQuest has a few noteworthy updates to its widget and local content.

First up, the widget has the following updates:

The Maps and Driving Directions experience
MapQuest Search functionality has been added
Added Traffic information
Performance and functionality improvements

In the local content update, MapQuest has added an "AddThis" button. You may have seen the AddThis button around the interwebs. It lets you share content a number of social networking and bookmarking sites.

What do you think of these updates? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 28, 2008

Port Your AOL Journal to Blogger

AOL is shutting down its blogging product, AOL Journals. Google wants Journal users to head on over to Blogger to keep their journaling spirit alive.

So, they've created a migration tool to help you port your AOL Journals postings over to a new Blogger blog.

You'll want to hurry. AOL Journals says goodbye this Friday, October 31.

For details, check out the Blogger blog.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 21, 2008

MapQuest Now Optimized for the iPhone

One of the main reasons I own an iPhone is to have access to a map when I'm out and about. The iPhone comes standard with Google Maps, but I find its always good to have a backup map. (Google Maps isn't perfect, but you didn't hear that from me.)

That's why it was good to hear that MapQuest now has an optimized version of its site for the iPhone. Even though the iPhone lets you surf the web, surfing normal pages is still a pain. Whenever a site has versions for mobile devices, it's so much better for the mobile user.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

September 10, 2008

AOL Now Aggregates Email from Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo

In a refreshing show of humility and honesty, AOL has admitted that perhaps visitors to AOL.com do not necessarily have @aol.com at the end of their email addresses.

So, they've enabled users to aggregate their email from Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo on the AOL.com homepage.

“With the launch of mail aggregation, AOL will be the first among the big traditional portals to offer a centralized email experience,” commented Bill Wilson, Executive Vice President of Programming, AOL. “We know that consumers today have multiple email accounts on different services to keep tabs on daily, and we want to make it easier for them. This is an important first step in opening up AOL.com and giving users the ability to populate the AOL.com homepage with content and services they use on a daily basis, regardless of where it lives.”

Of course, you can do the same on iGoogle, but the applications were developed by third parties.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

AOL Releases Beta Version of Truveo Video Search

AOL has announced the launch of the beta mobile version of Truveo, a video search engine. There's already an iPhone application, but now other mobile phone users have a chance to search Truveo from their phones. Users can access the mobile version at http://wap.aol.com/truveo.

“One of our missions is to provide consumers with easy access to our products no matter where they are or what device they are using,” said Kevin Conroy, Executive Vice President of AOL. “Truveo Mobile Video Search continues that effort by giving mobile users access to the industry's leading video search engine and enabling them to enjoy videos anytime, anywhere.”

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 9, 2008

MapQuest Launches Local Portal

MapQuest today added a local portal to its popular mapping website. Found at local.mapquest.com or by clicking on the local icon on the front page, the new local site shows news, weather, dining, movies, and more for your location.

The features are displayed in modules, which can be dragged and dropped where you would like to put them. To remove a module altogether, simply click the "Customize" button near the top and uncheck the box of the module you're not interested in.

Each module can be individually refreshed for the latest information, or you can click the "Refresh Page" button, which is next to the Customize button near the top of the page.

Recently, MapQuest tapped Citysearch for comprehensive local search results.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 3, 2008

AOL's Platform-A Launches iPhone Advertising Solution

AOL has announced that their ad-serving platform and network, Platform-A, is launching an iPhone ad optimization solution. The solution is offered through Third Screen Media and detects when web browsing is being conducted on an iPhone. AOL says the combination of the Third Screen Media mobile network gives Platform-A, which reaches 90% of the internet audience, the ability to deliver up to 75 million iPhone ads per month.

“Today's launch is a perfect example of how Platform-A's unmatched reach, solutions and technologies can benefit advertisers trying to reach consumers in the most compelling way,” said Lynda Clarizio, President of Platform-A. “We can not only help advertisers effectively reach iPhone users on WAP pages and Web pages, but we can also deliver banners optimized for display on the iPhone.”

Last month, Platform-A opened up mobile ads to third parties. In June, Platform-A was made available in Europe.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 6:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 15, 2008

AOL Confirms SocialThing Acquisition

While not yet complete, AOL has confirmed that they will acquire SocialThing. The FriendFeed competitor is still in private beta.

No word on the price for the acquisition, but expect it to be small. Still, AOL seems to be going after the social media world, having recently acquired social network Bebo for $850 million.

Bebo has 40 million users, doubling AOL's media reach via the acquisition.

The push towards social media is likely part of a larger re-focus of AOL's business model around advertising. AOL parent company Time Warner recently confirmed that AOL will be split into two businesses: internet access and media/advertising.

via The Social

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 8, 2008

Hit Me While I'm Down: Google Warns on AOL Investment Loss

Google has filed a quarterly report with the SEC that includes information about its 5% stake in AOL. The news is not good for the Time Warner owned internet company, which has already posted a loss of $230 million in the second quarter of 2008. Google said that their stake in AOL may be "impaired," an accounting term that explains a significant loss stemming from an investment.

Google invested in AOL to stave off a Microsoft advertising partnership, which would have replaced the one AOL had with Google. The question now is, was it worth $1 billion to keep the 3rd place Microsoft with a 10-ish% market share at bay?

And Yahoo should be wondering if their new Google partnership will really be enough to keep the company afloat.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

via AP

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

August 6, 2008

Time Warner to Split AOL Media and Access Divisions

After months of speculation, Time Warner has confirmed that it will split AOL's media and internet access divisions. Despite TW's revenue increase of 5%, the internet property's operating income dropped a whopping 36% in the second quarter of 2008, a loss of $230 million.

The loss is due primarily to a decline in subscription revenues. Subscriptions are down based on AOL's decision to allow members to keep their emails for free. They lost 604,000 subscribers quarter-over-quarter and 2.8 million year-over-year.

Of course, this was all initially driven by a desire by consumers to have broadband internet access in their homes, provided by the cable companies. Time Warner is a provider of cable services.

The silver lining is AOL's advertising, which was up 2%, an $8 million increase. Even then, there was a slight decline in display advertising across AOL Network sites.

Still, AOL has been refocusing its business model on advertising as opposed to internet access subscriptions. This is an obvious move, especially considering its Platform-A digital advertising division is #1 in online advertising networks.

It is widely rumored and expected that Time Warner will sell off AOL altogether to a buyer in the online advertising space. They've talked to both Yahoo and Microsoft in attempts to strike a deal, but much like the aforementioned companies, an agreement has yet to be reached.

via CNET

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 4, 2008

AOL Sheds Tacoda, Launches Third-Party Mobile Ads, Buys SocialThing

AOL has been busy lately, building on their renewed focus on a business model built around online advertising with social media to boot.

First up, AOL is shedding Tacoda and folding it into Ad.com, part of Platform-A, AOL's ad division. The division recently began integrating Tacoda's behavioral targeting across its network.

Platform-A is also opening up its mobile ads to third parties. Third Screen Media, Platform-A's mobile ad provider, will offer mobile publishers the opportunity to access multiple ad networks for monetizing their advertising inventory, letting them fill more of their available inventory and create additional revenue streams.

Finally, TechCrunch is reporting that AOL has bought FriendFeed competitor, SocialThing, which is still in private beta. This seems to be another move by AOL to play in the social media space. Earlier this year, AOL bought social network Bebo for $850 million.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 16, 2008

AOL Seeks Microsoft Deal Before Yahoo Aug 1 Shareholders Meeting

AOL is feeling the urge to merge and soon. Time Warner is reportedly seeking a deal with Microsoft prior to the fast-approaching August 1 Yahoo shareholders meeting.

The deal would merge AOL with Yahoo's search business, and owned by Microsoft. Time Warner would take a minority stake in the newly formed company. AOL has shifted its focus from dial-up internet service to online advertising.

Previously, Yahoo talked to AOL about a merger in what appeared to be one of many attempts to stave off Microsoft.

AOL's Platform-A was the top online advertising network in the month of March. The network reaches 9 out of 10 internet users, or 170 million people. Yahoo Networks came in second at 160 million, while Google came in third at 152 million.

Seems like Microsoft should acquire AOL with or without Yahoo. Then again, nothing is quite what it seems when it comes to the whole Microhoo debacle is it?

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 8, 2008

Ex-Google Exec Heads to Bebo Europe

Ex-Googler Kate Burns has been tapped by social networking site Bebo to head up their European operations, according to the Guardian. Burns previously was Google's managing director for the UK. She also helped launch DoubleClick and AltaVista in the UK.

Bebo was recently acquired by AOL for $850 million. The site boasts 40 million members worldwide. AOL's Platform-A recently announced a guaranteed CPM for Bebo developers. Platform-A was the largest ad network in March.

Also in March, Microsoft announced a data portability with 5 social networks, including Bebo. However, AOL joined Google's OpenSocial initiative in May. Google owns a 5% stake in AOL, and was recently given permission to unload the stock, though it has yet to do so.

Meanwhile, rumor of a possible Yahoo-AOL merger have reared its (ugly?) head again, but today reports are suggesting any deal would not be completed in July. Yahoo's shareholder meeting is August 1.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 19, 2008

AOL Completes Bebo Acquisition

AOL has announced the completion of its acquisition of Bebo, a social network based in the UK. Bebo boasts an estimated 40 million users worldwide.

Randy Falco, Chairman and CEO of AOL, said of the deal, “AOL is now fully focused on growing our business in three key areas – our advertising network, publishing and people networks – by delivering relevant content and advertising across the Web, and we're making great progress in each area.”

But will the acquisition threaten another ad network? Last year, Yahoo UK inked an ad deal with Bebo for the social network's display advertising.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 17, 2008

Is The AOL Brand Associated With Old School Web?

Seems the folks over at Time Warner have finally realized that the AOL brand does not have any impact in the niched content space. But is AOL mired in the thoughts of web users as that "old internet dialup service" as some of the Time Warner staff believe?

According to the Associated Press, AOL parent Time Warner was more blunt in a regulatory filing:

"If AOL cannot effectively build a portfolio of alternate brands that are appealing to Internet consumers, AOL may have difficulty in increasing the engagement of Internet consumers on its Web products and services. AOL believes that the `AOL' brand is associated in the minds of consumers with its dial-up Internet access service."

To overcome this hurdle AOL has started creating separate niched communities - though they may want to hire someone else to name them. Asylum for the young men's site, Spinner, the indie music site, WalletPop, the personal finance site, StyleList for fashion and AOL Body (which kept the association after tests showed it works) for women's health.

Should be interesting to see how that works for them. I had not heard of any of them prior to reading the AP report so the new branding has not made much of an impact yet. Though why, as AP stated, have they decided to roll the new sites out quietly?

Branding requires people knowing about the name. Forget replacing the Yahoo board, AOL needs some new minds at the helm - maybe some that are not still thinking like last century.

ValleyWag has had some interesting things to say about Bill Wilson, the head of the AOL rebranding effort.

Bill Wilson: Forget about his mother, will he frag AOL?

Posted by Frank Watson at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

March 13, 2008

Press release about AOL acquiring Bebo ranks #1 in Techmeme

Nathania Johnson did a great job earlier today covering the news about the AOL acquisition of Bebo for $850 million cash. But, there's a follow-up story that Drew Kerr over at Four Corners Communications has brought to my attention.

Drew emailed me to say, "The PRESS RELEASE carried on Business Wire -- not a news article, of AOL's acquisition of social search engine company Bebo -- is the top item on Techmeme's site today."

He added, "Here's another example of how Techmeme, the highly popular news aggregator among the tech community and tech bloggers, continues to recognize and display Business Wire content as a leading news source."

Once upon a time, you might have seen something similar in Google News. As I reported in "Beyond Beta: Google News Graduates" back in January 2006, Krishna Bharat, the creator of Google News, wrote in January 2006, "We've certainly gotten a lot of feedback from both readers and editors. For example, readers told us they loved the news clusters but they didn't want press releases on the home page (although they are still useful to have in the search results)."

So, Techmeme seems to be taking a different path. Will it last?

Only if press releases meet the high standard set by Ivy Lee in his "Declaration of Principles" issued more than 100 years ago. The so-called father of modern PR said back then, "This is not a secret press bureau. All our work is done in the open. We aim to supply news. If you think any of our matter ought properly to go to your business office, do not use it."

His Declaration of Principles added, "Our matter is accurate. Further details on any subject treated will be supplied promptly, and any editor will be assisted most cheerfully in verifying directly any statement of fact. In brief, our plan is, frankly and openly, on behalf of business concerns and public institutions, to supply to the press and public of the United States prompt and accurate information concerning subjects which it is of value and interest to the public to know about."

So, can the vast majority of PR people live by these rules today? Let's wait and see. The jury is out, but I expect a verdict shortly.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 3:59 PM | Permalink

AOL Buys Social Network Bebo for $850M

AOL will buy Facebook competitor Bebo for $850 million cash. Combining social network Bebo's estimated 40 million users with AIM and ICQ will boost AOL's social media reach to 80 million users worldwide.

Google had reportedly been in talks to acquire to acquire Bebo to bolster its Orkut social search engine.

The deal comes on the heels of AOL's launch of Open AIM 2.0, which enables developers to utilize the popular instant messaging client for third party sites and applications. Apple also recently announced a downloadable AIM application for the iPhone.

Like other search engines, AOL has been making several strategic moves in an attempt to position itself as a leader in digital media and marketing. The company spent nearly $1 billion building Platform-A, a top display ad serving network focused on helping marketers build brands that perform online. In the process it has acquired ADTECH, buy.at, Lightningcast, Quigo, TACODA and Third Screen Media.

Still, the future of AOL remains uncertain. Rumors of an acquisition by Disney were squelched by Robert Iger yesterday. Parent company Time Warner is open to a sale or spinoff, including a partnership with Yahoo Last week, it was widely reported that Yahoo and AOL were in talks, as part of Yahoo's delaying/avoidance strategy in the wake of Microsoft's unsolicited offer for the Sunnyvale search engine.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:17 AM | Permalink

February 11, 2008

Another AOL Exec Leaves

AOL says aloha to strategic ad exec Dave Morgan, founder of AOL-acquired Tacoda.

From a leadership standpoint, huge loss. Morgan was EVP Global Advertising Strategy. His departure essentially leaves AOL without a global advertising strategy while Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes splits and sells AOL.

Doubtful any entrepreneurial execs would stay through the sale. Buyers: Yahoo? Google? MicroWho? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Impact on Yahoo-AOL talks? Negligible. Paid Content's Rafat Ali broke the story and has the exclusive on why Morgan stayed at AOL for only 90 days - think startups & Platform A, not AvenueA or M&A.

AOL paid around $275 million (actual purchase price undisclosed) to buy the behavioral targeting network, Tacoda. AOL most likely didn't have the development team to build behavioral targeting technology in-house.

That left AOL's search engine renaissance missing the search re-targeting piece, the hottest area in paid search and conversion marketing. If search engine consolidation is all about search, then Tacoda and Advertising.com are valuable prizes for Yahoo -- or Google, which owns a 5 percent stake in AOL.

Tacoda had several slogans during its evolution (before being swallowed up by AOL). The startup was "The Audience Management Company" and "The Audience Company." My favorite: "Where the people are" … and Dave Morgan is not.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 10:54 AM | Permalink

February 10, 2008

AOL Yahoo Talk Merger - Microsoft Rebuked

Yahoo merges with AOL, saves Time Warner and re-Bewkes Microsoft. That's a best case scenario for Yahoo from investment bank advisers at Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. The i-banks are advising Yahoo on mergers with media and technology firms that might snatch Yang & Co. from the jaws of Microsoft. On Sunday, Siobhan Kennedy and Suzy Jagger of The Times Online (UK) broke the story AOL may emerge as Yahoo's exit strategy from the Microsoft $45 billion (give or take a billion) bid.

An AOL merger leads the pack of deals Yahoo and its i-bank M&A advisers are pursuing. Not long ago Yahoo failed to close a deal for AOL. Now the pressure from Yahoo shareholders won't let up until a Microsoft bid (sweetened or unsweetened) is accepted - or an AOL-sized deal is done. Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes would be the big winner.

Google has long been discussed as Yahoo's outsourced search partner (again). The surprise? The House of Mouse has emerged as a possible home for Yahooligans. (The revenge of Terry Semel?)

If you can't bring Hollywood to Yahoo, then move the Yahoo to Hollywood. Any Yahoo tie-up would likely put Disney CEO Bob Iger in the driver's seat, not a bad thing for Yahoo's beleaguered shareholders.

Would an AOL merger somehow increase the value of Yahoo's stock by more than 60 percent? (Microsoft premium: 62 percent) Not likely. Yahoo shareholders have long been asking - to no avail - for a plan to boost YHOO by 25 percent from its 52 week low. So far the Microsoft bid has been the only (un)plan that did.

I mentioned the AOL scenario last Friday morning on a conference call with Oppenheimer senior analyst Sandeep Aggarwal and Oppenheimer's Media & Internet and Enterprise Software teams.

Kevin Lee of Didit joined us on the call, along with Jaideep Singh, CEO of vertical search engine Spock.com and Seth Barnes, senior manager for Edmunds.com, a leading consumer automotive site.

To listen to a replay, the dial-in number is (888) 266-2081 or (703) 925-2533. Replay dates are now thru 2/22/2008 23:59 EST.

Whether the Yahoo AOL portal-saurus merger would work is moot.

Now it's One Deal, One Day.

All this week: Yahoo! on Woot!.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:43 PM | Permalink

July 30, 2007

AOL Rumored To Be Changing Name to TMZ

Bill Hartzer is reporting that AOL is moving towards changing its name to TMZ - the large entertainment site.

Though it is noted at this stage the information is only speculation, not doubt people will be scurrying to confirm this one.

Posted by Frank Watson at 3:17 PM | Permalink

February 14, 2007

AOL Turns Up Dial on FullView Marketing

AOL launched its new FullView search interface in October, integrating Google search results with multimedia, local or other content from AOL and its partners. On Tuesday, AOL shuttered its AOL Search blog and opened up a new "Discover FullView" blog in its place. It's decidedly conversational in tone, written by Mia, a young AOLer whose stated goals are to provide FullView updates, search tips, and persuade users to try AOL Search with FullView.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 5:29 AM | Permalink

December 27, 2006

AOL Merger Speculation

Mediapost reported last week that Merrill Lynch was eyeing the possibility of AOL merging with either Microsoft or Yahoo, in an attempt to gain back market share from Google. This speculation comes on the heels of a report that AOL's total subscriber numbers are up for the first time in a year, after dropping premium memberships in August.

Yahoo would be the more likely company to merge with AOL, accourding to Merrill Lynch. Merrill Lynch's report also noted that traditional media companies may stay away from the purchase of AOL, in the wake of the "disasterous" initial merger with Time Warner.

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 12:18 PM | Permalink

December 18, 2006

2006 Top Searches

Following Yahoo's release on December 4 of its top searches for 2006, last week AOL, Lycos and MSN Live released their top searches for the year 2006. Google still has their 2005 review at Zeitgeist, along with recent monthly totals. Ask.com presents weekly lists, but has yet to release a 2006 year in review.

A closer look at these lists reveals some interesting questions about the differences in the data from engine to engine.

Looking at the slight differences between this data can be an interesting project, and can probably yield some good insight into both the user demographics of each of the engines

Paris Hilton is an interesting example to use in showing how search engines classify types of searches. In Yahoo! and in AOL, Paris is listed as a celebrity, yet she is found in top News searches for MSN Live. Does this mean that people search Live's (formerly search.msn.com) News category when they look for everyone's favorite socialite?

More can undoubtedly be read into the top overall searches reported for each portal. AOL reports: "weather" (does this mean they included all weather-inclusive searches or just the term "weather?"); Yahoo! says Britney Spears is number one (hmm...wonder if that includes people misspelling it?); MSN Live claims that the world wanted to know about Ronaldinho more than anyone or thing else; and Lycos puts Poker at number one. Again, others can fill in the blanks as to what they think the demographics most closely associated with each portal are.

It will be interesting to see what the top Google searches are. It would also be nice to have some more details as to how many misspellings were included in searches and perhaps how many of the searches for each top term were actually contained in a longer keyword phrase.

See also the discussions about this at the Yahoo! Search Blog, and the MSN Blog post that introduced their list. AOL has opened up the floor for discussion at the AOL Search Blog (thanks Susan for the link!). Lycos provides a platform for discussion which can be found at the Lycos 50 Blog. (Thanks Carolyn!)

(Note this story was edited after I discovered that Paris Hilton did make the top celebrity list at AOL. For some reason I missed that originally. Apologies to the AOL team for this oversight. CB)

Posted by Chris Boggs at 10:58 AM | Permalink

August 21, 2006

AOL Fires CTO & Two Employees After Search Records Slip Up

The Wall Street Journal just reported that AOL has fired the Chief Technology Officer, Maureen Govern, and two other employees after releasing search records last week. The article named "AOL Fires Technology Chief After Web-Search Data Scandal" discloses that Maureen Govern, the CTO along with the researcher who released the data and the manager overseeing the research have been all fired. I am kind of surprised that AOL hit someone so high to the top, but it does make a statement, a statement AOL must make.

Postscript From Danny: News.com has a nice follow-up here, Three workers depart AOL after privacy uproar, and Lisa Barone over at Bruce Clay highlights a Mercury News article where AOL's statement of keeping data "roughly 30 days" obviously didn't hold true. AOL also said they purge personally identifiable information after 30 days last year. To be fair, the search records did have personal ids removed. It's simply that the searches themselves made at least one person identifiable.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 2:28 PM | Permalink

August 15, 2006

EFF Asks FTC To Limit How Long AOL Can Store Search Records

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has asked the US Federal Trade Commission to investigate AOL's release of search records last week and prevent the company from storing search data for longer than two weeks.

The formal complaint (PDF) asks for the FTC to:

order AOL to refrain from collecting or storing logs of its users' search activity except where necessary incident to the rendition of AOL's services or the protection of AOL rights and property, and to refrain in any case from storing logs of its users' search activity in personally identifiable form or for more than fourteen (14) days;

The EFF also wants all those whose searches were revealed through the data to be notified by AOL, which sounds like a good idea and something you'd think AOL would already want to do. Other things are requested, such as one year's worth of credit monitoring to protect against identity theft. That seems far-fetched, but I suppose you never know.

Coinciding with the complaint, the Wall Street Journal has a debate between the EFF and an internet lobbying group NetCoalition that apparently represents Yahoo and Google, among others.

The debate, Should Web Search Data Be Stored?, is free to anyone to view. It's well worth a read, if only to read that the US Department Of Justice is apparently arguing that access to search records might not require a search warrant, as the EFF says the Electronic Communication Privacy Act requires.

Overall, I'm much more on the side of the EFF in the debate. Some highlights from it and my remarks about them.

NetCoalition: Search queries are stored and used by Internet companies for internal purposes.

Me: Search queries have been shared by various companies in different ways with third parties over the years. More important, even if these are stored for internal purposes, there's no guarantee that they'll be perfectly protected. Leaks, accidental or intentional, do happen.

NetCoalition: There are good, legitimate reasons why an Internet company would use historical search queries for internal uses. For example, search query information can be used in research and development to make improvements to search technology, to better tailor and make more efficient users' online requests. Companies also analyze historical query information to detect and protect against click fraud -- an activity that involves faking clicks on Web advertisements to drive up costs.

Me: Excellent points, but the major search engines are going to have to step up now with better proof that there's no way data can be tied back with an individual, even when made "anonymous" in the way AOL has shown doesn't work. Click fraud refunds typically aren't given for activity longer than 60 days, so that provides a time horizon for how long data might be associated with actual users/IP activity.

NetCoalition: Search queries are essentially "directory assistance" requests from users to companies that help them find locations on the Internet. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act is meant to protect communications between and among users -- not to protect requests from customers for directions on the Internet.

Me: Wow, I think the search engines need a new lobbying group that understands search better. Searches can be directory assistance and much more than that. Search engines are confidents, trusted friends that we effectively tell secrets to in order to get advice. They aren't about getting location. They are about getting information.

NetCoalition: The Video Privacy Protection Act is a bad analogy. Internet companies do not match up the user's personal information (e.g., name, address and phone number) with search queries the way a video rental record would.

Me: Except they do. If you're logged in to a search engine, then any personal information you've provided is associated with your search query in some way.

EFF: The public needs to know the facts about how their data is being stored and used before they can make informed decisions as consumers as to whether and how to use a particular search engine, and to make informed decisions as citizens as to whether and how Congress needs to update the law. I think the best route would be hearings in Congress to get to the bottom of the issue.

Me: I think the best route would be for the search engines themselves to act in conjunction with privacy groups right now to get protections and standards in place. But if they can't act, then hopefully laws covering the entire search spectrum -- from ISP to search engine -- will be enacted.

NetCoalition: Search queries are not being linked to users' personal information and shared for marketing purposes.

Me: Except they are. Showing ads in response to a query, while long-standing and generally accepted, is a marketing purpose. Showing ads based on search profiles, such as the New York Times wrote about today, is a more extreme example.

EFF: My organization also strongly opposes proposals by the DOJ and Congresswoman DeGette that would force companies to store this kind of sensitive data for government use. That's like asking the post office to keep copies of our mail, or phone companies to keep recordings of our phone calls, just in case investigators might find it useful. The bottom line is that Americans deserve the same privacy protections online that they've always had offline, and that includes the ability to be able to speak and consume speech freely and privately, without fear that their deepest secrets might be shared with the government or published to the world. Yet when search engines accumulate this kind of data, such disclosures are bound to happen, as this week's news has demonstrated.

Me: Well said!

Postscript: I'd sent some questions over to the EFF and just got answers back from EFF staff attorney Kevin Bankston. Here they are:

Q. Why just AOL? Why aren't you asking for all search engines to be limited? I did see that you want federal laws to expand to cover them, but what happened with AOL could happen with the others as well.

A. Why aren't we asking the FTC to investigate and take action against other search engines? Because we can't, just like we can't go to court and demand that Google pay for AOL's mistake. The FTC isn't a suggestion box. We had a specific complaint about AOL--we think this disclosure violated their policy and therefore constitutes an unfair and deceptive trade practice--and we filed that complaint with the FTC. If other companies engaged in similar disclosures, we'd file similar complaints.

If you are familiar with our work, you know that we've been complaining about the logging practices of search engines as a category for a long while. In fact, I'm usually the one trying to explain to Google-hungry journalists that your Yahoos and AOLs and MSNs and other multi-service portals pose most if not all of the same privacy threats, so it's funny to be accused of singling out one of them for some sort of special mistreatment. We're merely reacting to a specific incident that happened to involve AOL rather than Google or Yahoo or MSN.

We want strong, clear legal rules that cover all the search engines; we want all the search engines to limit retention.

Q. Why just the search engines? Many ISPs are recording the same data but aren't being limited on data retention. It's actually more worrisome to me in that many ISPs are happily selling this data to third parties.

Again, if you are familiar with our work, you know that we are generally concerned about data retention by all stripes of online service providers (see, e.g., our white paper on best practices for online service providers, http://www.eff.org/osp/). So, in short, we share your worry. But again, we are reacting to a specific incident concerning a search engine, so our discussion right now is focused on search engines.

BTW, if you are specifically aware of any ISP that routinely collects the searches its users submit to other search engines, we'd love to hear more about it. I think that without very clear consent from the customer, that would be an unauthorized interception of your communications, and therefore a felony.

Q. How long does the EFF retain search data? You've got a search box. People do sensitive searches on your sites. I want to ensure AOL isn't being held to a higher standard than the EFF itself meets.

We don't retain search terms. Of course, since we use Google, Google does undoubtedly retain them. But we proxy everyone's requests so that their IP addresses and cookies are not transmitted to Google, therefore individual search terms are only identifiable to EFF visitors as a population and not personally or uniquely. In fact, we call this out on our site: if you click on the link next to our search box that says "about EFF's search," you'll see a pop-up that says "EFF uses Google for search functionality on www.eff.org. To protect your privacy, EFF proxies search requests to Google with a special CGI script on our server, thus hiding your IP address and your Google cookie (if any) from Google's servers."

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:02 AM | Permalink

August 9, 2006

Search Privacy Concerns Humanized As The New York Times Tracks Down Anonymous AOL Searcher

A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749 is an excellent read from the New York Times, where you can meet the person who is about to become the most famous searcher ever: Thelma Arnold, a 62-year-old from Georgia. Using the released AOL search records, the New York Times figured out who she was and interviewed her and her searching habits for the story. No more discussing whether anonymous search records might contain enough information to identify people. In some cases, they do (or at least enough to make an extremely good guess and get confirmation from the person themselves). Thelma Arnold now becomes the face of search privacy issues. Meanwhile, though not naming people, News.com has a good look at more searching behavior from the records: AOL's disturbing glimpse into users' lives.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:53 AM | Permalink

August 7, 2006

AOL Releases Search Data & Raises Privacy Concerns

Techmeme is reporting a huge amount of concern over AOL releasing, then pulling, search logs done by 500,000 users over three months. The purpose of the release was to help search researchers better understand user behavior in conjunction with an industry event for search researchers happening in Seattle, SIGIR. The data was posted on the AOL research site, but has since been pulled.

Unlike what TechCrunch suggests, this isn't private data in that no personally identifiable information has been released. Instead, actual usernames have been replaced with anonymous one. However, this still means it's possible to track the behavior of a particular user and potentially know who they are if their searches contained personally identifiable information.

To understand this more, this page gives some examples gleaned from the new AOL data. Also see this example of someone who might be planning to murder his wife. Danny's earlier post, Private Searches Versus Personally Identifiable Searches, also covers the general difference between private data versus personally identifiable stuff.

How does what AOL compare to what the Department of Justice asked for from search engines earlier this year? It actually goes further. The DOJ simply wanted searches, not any further information that would allow a group of searches to be linked with an individual, even if that individual as kept anonymous.

Danny may have more to say about this next week. He's at the SES San Jose conference this week and very busy with that, but he sent me some notes from a brief review of the AOL move to give perspective here as he sees it.

Postscript From Danny: Just a few quick thoughts and updates in the short time I have between sessions.

AOL: Dooooooh! from John Battelle and AOL apologizes for release of user search data from News.com have AOL apologizing for the release, now said to be data involving about 658,000 individuals from March through May of this year. AOL says the release of the data wasn't properly vetted for privacy issues and that the release intentions were innocent.

I believe that. Make no mistake, this was a big screw up. The researchers providing the data didn't think hard enough about how making it possible to build a profile of individuals, even if they were given anonymous names, might then make it possible to determine who those people are if they revealed enough information in their searches.

In addition, it's going to be very difficult for some law enforcement agency not to want to subpoena AOL for actual user names when they read about things that suggest a murder is being planned or may have happened, as covered above. I'm not saying they'll get it, but I think it's almost inevitable that someone will try. That will set off further privacy fireworks.

But yes, the original intention was innocent. I got an email about the research site last week (and with my traveling all last week, simply did not have a chance to check it out). Here's what a researcher involved with it emailed me:

Over the last few years I have witnessed a divide developing within Information Retrieval research - between the haves and have-nots. The ‘haves' are the companies like Google, Yahoo, MSN, and ourselves, with lots of resources and data. The ‘have-nots' are people without those resources such as academic researchers and smart guys at small companies. We want to be able to help anyone work on great ideas by giving them the data and infrastructure they need.

So we started building data sets and made them available for everyone to test their ideas with. Each data set features a dynamic view, which allows you to inspect the data without having to download it. We also built some APIs for news, video, audio and podcasts, which will save people time from having to do that themselves. We have tried to stay away from interfaces like web search as those are already around.

There's nothing evil in that. In fact, there's much to appreciate, intention-wise.

We all use search engines so much, and they are so important in our daily lives, yet they remain one of the most poorly researched media venues out there. Yes, we're getting new labs like the one from Yahoo at UC Berkeley. But most search behavior studies outside of the search engines have depended on ancient search logs from places like Excite from back in 2001 or so. Newer studies, if the search engines are doing them, simply don't come out often. So the intention to promote learning with this release was innocent, if not honorable. The execution was poor and inexcusable.

This is the second major milestone in raising awareness of search privacy issues this year. The first was the Department of Justice action, which rightly focused on whether we need more safeguards over what governments can request. Today's upset highlights the protections that are needed again corporate releases of data.

The good news is that perhaps it will spur better protections even more. Microsoft, Google & Others Call For Unified Federal Privacy Protection covers how the major search engines recently asked for better legal protections from the government. But perhaps the search industry itself will move forward to develop better privacy standards. I've hoped recently for some type of Search Privacy Bill Of Rights. Since I doubt the government will act quickly, perhaps the industry will go faster before a third incident causes searchers to completely lose faith in them.

AOL's Jason Calacanis, who runs Netscape, is proposing that AOL not keep search records at all. That might sound like a nice idea, but it's not practical. To not keep records raises issues with click fraud, plus with internal tracking to determine how to improve a search engine itself in how it responds and feeds queries. Putting better limits on how long data is kept might help, as might developing ways to somehow remove personally identifiable information that might get into search records.

Then again, Ixquick recently tried a PR push on how it doesn't keep records. Perhaps that's going to be a way for some players to win new users. Just make sure you also use some tool like Anonymizer to keep your ISP from logging your actions. Otherwise, your data is still out there and being recorded in another way.

For more on search privacy issues, here's a big giant list of recent posts:

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:52 AM | Permalink

January 19, 2006

Keynote Says Google, Yahoo Preferred in North America

Keynote Systems has released the results of its annual study of North American searchers and their satisfaction with search engines. The study ranked user satisfaction by tracking the search behavior of 2,000 users on AOL Search, Ask Jeeves, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo, and found Google and Yahoo were clear #1 and #2 favorites, respectively. Today's SearchDay article, Survey: Google, Yahoo Still Favorites in North America, has the details. Also see yesterday's SearchDay article, Study: Google #1 in China, for details of a similar study Keynote performed in China.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:47 AM | Permalink

December 17, 2005

Special Holiday Goodies, Pages, and Info from a Few of the Major Engines

Several of the large web engines are offering special holiday goodies from smart answers to holiday questions to logos to holiday borders around ads.

Let's review: + Ask Jeeves offers up Smart Answers with info about and links about: Christmas ||| Hanukkah ||| Kwanzza. + Google places special festive borders around AdWords on web results pages for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzza, and some related holiday words. + A festive snowman visits the logo on the Yahoo home page and provides a direct link to Yahoo Holiday Guide. + AOL Search offers "snapshots" atop of results pages with links and info about the three widely celebrated December holidays: C ||| H ||| K.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:22 PM | Permalink

September 23, 2005

AOL.com Portal Leaves Beta

After a three month beta period, the AOL.com open web portal has been officially released.

The AOL.com home page offers access to a many AOL services including mail, mobile tools, and AIM which are available at no charge to all web users as the service continues its move from its original subscription model to one that's ad-supported. AOL.com also includes a tabbed AOL Search box at the top of the site. The home page seems to put emphasis on multimedia content. You'll find access to AOL Video material via the main search box, a "Video on Demand" link located directly below the search box, and a "Media on Demand" module (along with another search box) located about 3/4 of the way down the page. The AOL.com portal also provides a link to the MyAOL service which remains in beta and currently offers an RSS feed reader. This page offers additional info about what AOL has planned for the MyAOL service in the future.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:54 AM | Permalink

August 25, 2005

AOL's Beta Central Now With RSS Feed

The AOL Beta Central page is the place to find news about and links to the latest tests that the folks in Dulles, VA are making publicly available. If you would like to be alerted to new posts on the site an AOL Beta Central RSS feed is now available. You'll find it at: http://beta.aol.com/rss/news.xml

Posted by Gary Price at 7:44 PM | Permalink

April 15, 2005

AOL Tweaks Search Interface; Offering Links to ITunes

I noticed a tweak to the AOL Search interface this morning. Until today, a tab labeled "Audio and Video" (cached version) linked to an interface that searched both types of content. You'll now see that audio and video search have separate tabs on the home page and separate interfaces (audio ||| video).

I also noticed (possibly late to the party with this item) that some results found when searching for audio with AOL Search offer direct links ITunes. For example, I searched for "Chemical Brothers" and found a link labeled "ITunes" next to the first "featured" result. Clicking it opened my ITunes app and took me directly to The Chemical Brothers ITunes page.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:42 AM | Permalink

April 12, 2005

AOL Posts Spring's Top Searches

AOL Hot Searches Spring 2005 now up from AOL covers top "spring" search topics on its US service from January 1 to March 21, 2005, the company tells us. You'll see top baseball teams, players, spring cleaning related terms, top tax forms searched for, colleges, diets, destinations, flower-related, prom-related and wedding-related terms. As a reminder, top searches-style lists from other major search engines are listed on our What People Search For page.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:21 AM | Permalink

January 25, 2005

AOL Says Adios to Newsgroups

A brief story in The Register mentions that AOL has stopped providing access to newsgroups. AOL tells users who want to search or browse these groups to visit Google Groups.

An AOL spokesman said the service is being withdrawn because so few people use it: "Google does a very good job of hosting newsgroups and the typical AOL user probably doesn't use newsgroups that often."

Posted by Gary Price at 3:37 PM | Permalink

January 24, 2005

AOL Search Enhancements Now Publicly Available

The enhancements at AOL Search that Chris and I wrote about last week (AOL Search: Playing In the Big Leagues Now) and were only accessible to AOL subscribers are now publicly available at search.aol.com

Posted by Gary Price at 7:55 AM | Permalink

January 20, 2005

AOL Search Playing with the Big Guns Now

AOL Search is rolling out some new enhancements to both its proprietary client software and to AOL Web Search as part of its relatively recent efforts to transform itself into a web portal. The new features are nothing revolutionary, but are useful and powerful, and effectively differentiate AOL Search from the other major players—including AOL Search partner Google.

Today's SearchDay article, AOL Search: Playing In the Big Leagues Now, covers the new enhancements, including search personalization features, result clustering using Vivisimo technology and local search results drawn from (among other sources) a customized crawl of the web by FAST Search & Transfer.

Postscript: John Battelle also has a nice write-up over here: AOL Puts A Stake In The Ground

Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:18 AM | Permalink

December 14, 2004

December 3, 2004

On AOL's Plans

Short article in the Wall Street Journal today (sub req) about AOL's move plans to offer moore free content for non-subcribers.

John Buckley, an AOL spokesman, says the current free site is basically a marketing tool for the paid subscription service. "You can look at the current [free] site as a Yugo," Mr. Buckley said, referring to a low-cost Yugoslavian car. "We're going to build a Bentley."

Posted by Gary Price at 3:16 PM | Permalink

December 2, 2004

MSN's Third Portal To Gain Blogs; Where's The Blog Search?

MSN is now offering blogging space through its new MSN Spaces service, making it the third major portal to jump into this area. The first? Google, of course.

Google a portal? Sure, a stealth portal. It's got all the traditional portal features of email, search and free home pages -- or at least the successor to personal home pages, blogs. You just don't see them all displayed in a traditional portal format.

My Google Buys Blogging Company - But Why? article from Feb. 2003 looks at the issue of blogs as a portal feature and Google heading down that path. One of the predictions in it, which was obvious to many, was that once Google knocked over the blog domino, other portals would follow.

AOL launched its AOL Journals service in September 2003. Now with MSN in the space, that leaves just Yahoo among the majors.

Yahoo still has the GeoCities personal home pages service (valued at $3.6 billion when acquired in 1999 -- in contrast, Google likely paid only a few million for Blogger). But I'm sure we'll eventually see Yahoo gain a blogging system as well.

All this is great for those seeking to build blogs, though it has nothing to do with search. What none of the majors yet offer is an actual blog search service.

Yahoo is the closest now, making it at least possible to search to find blog feeds but not through actual blog entries. MSN has promised an actual blog search engine to come out later this year. Google's also said last year that a blog search would come, though it gave no timeline about when. Aside from the majors, we list a number of other blog search engines here.

For more details of the new MSN Spaces service, see this ClickZ article: MSN Enters Blogging Fray with "Spaces". And as an aside, Microsoft blogvangelist Robert Scoble says he's sticking with the Radio UserLand service and provides a wrap-up of reaction to the new Microsoft entry.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 5:15 PM | Permalink

November 12, 2004

AOL Joins Search Shortcuts Game

News.com reports that AOL Search is joining the search shortcuts game with the release of AOL Snapshots.

Gerry Campbell, vice president and general manager of search for AOL, calls them "rocket science and smart editorial."

I'll also call it catch-up on AOL's part with other web search players. Most have been offering shortcuts for more than a year. Search shortcuts come in two basic flavors. Either a direct answer found at the top of the results page or direct links to specialized databases and other content. In some cases, shortcuts are triggered with a specific piece of syntax or by interpreting the query.

The News.com article mentions that AOL Snapshots are, "categories of popular information, such as movie times, news and sports scores, which will appear in the body of related search results."

Snapshots offer direct links to info, specific facts at the top of the results page, or an interactive web-based tools.

Here's a complete list of what AOL offers.

A good idea? Yes! Shortcuts can save a searcher time, clicks, and aggravation. They can also help by leading the searcher to high quality info and also allow companies (Time Warner and Yahoo are examples) to leverage content and promo other services they provide.

Search shortcuts might also also offer an early glimpse at how web engines will become answer engines (for certain types of queries) in the future.

Other Players Here are a few, just a few, examples of what other search companies offer.

+ Ask Jeeves has been online with MANY shortcuts (what they call Smart Search) for more than 18 months. Examples include: + Basic biographical info for newsmakers and celebrities + Local info (with direct links to key web sites) + Answers to questions (for certain queries) You can find info about other Smart Search shortcuts here and here.

+ Yahoo has also been ramping up on shortcuts during the last year. Examples include: + Sports Scores + Movie Times + Time Info + Gas Prices + Exchange Rates + Calculator and measurement converter. AllTheWeb (now part of Yahoo) was the first major engine to offer a web-based calculator (4/2003). Here's a full list of Yahoo's shortcuts.

+ Google also offers several shortcuts. Examples include: + News Headlines (via a Google One Box) + Flight Tracking + Calculator and conversions. A list of what Google offers is available here.

As I mentioned yesterday, MSN's new beta also provides direct answers and links for cetain query types.

Posted by Gary Price at 7:12 PM | Permalink

November 2, 2004

AOL: Personal Search Will Come

AOL has said before it plans to do things in terms of personalizing the search experience. This article from IDG has them saying it again: AOL eyes personal search. No specifics on particular products or release data -- just that personal moves will happen at some point in the future.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 21, 2004

AOL, Robots, and Search

AOL to promote Aim Robots Source: ComputerWeekly.com

It appears that AOL is beginning a push to build more instant messaging robots.

Huh?

"Aim Robots are sponsored and operated by AOL and other suppliers and appear as buddy icons in the buddy lists of Aim users who install them. For example, users can send an instant message to the AOLYellowpages Aim Robot with the name of a local business or with simply a keyword and the robot replies with related directory listings."

"Robot" technology is nothing new, its been around since 2002. In fact, I tried Smart Buddy, an AIM robot tool back then.

With the growing popularity of instant messaging along with more and more interest in vertical search tools, it will be interesting to see if AOL partners with some of these services to create search robots like the directory robot mentioned above. Would the search companies be interested? I know some have tried it before.

How about the Feedster robot or the IMDB robot? Will companies like Dialog and Factiva get involved since instant messaging is growing in the business world?

Finally, it's easy to realize that "answer engine" technology and IM robots will get along famously. Coupling an "answer engine" with a IM robot also might make sense for mobile searching.

Here's a list of the AIM robots that are currently available.

UPDATE: We've learned that just today CitySearch released an AIM robot. They also offer a search-by-email option.

It's also worth noting that the new version of Yahoo Instant Messenger allows you to search directly from the IM client.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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