Welcome to the New AOL and More Missed Opportunities
Today AOL revealed its newly redesigned homepage (newly skinned really). This was to coincide with the formal spinning off from old parent company Time Warner. AOL's new homepage allows you to choose which bad design you to see in the background as you wade through all the content on the page.
This is the first news I can remember coming out about AOL in awhile and I found myself asking, "What is AOL? What are they offering? Do they still sell Internet access?" (I still don't know the answer to that last question...)
AOL is now pushing to be a content destination, or what we used to call portals. You may be surprised to find out that AOL actually has the fourth largest network of websites in the U.S. with 98 million unique users, according to ComScore. Their plan is to be the most unique content producer on the net - meaning that of the news they showcase they want to generate most of it themselves (currently 80%). And they believe that this will be attractive to advertisers and make them want to place more ads with them.
My Take
I think that AOL lost its way when it was purchased by Time Warner. AOL also chose to not capitalize on its subscriber base over and over again. As broadband quickly started taking hold in the later 1990's and early 2000's AOL continued to push its dial-up Internet service and pursue its ambitions to be a content-based Internet portal.
The problem with this strategy is that everyone was switching from painful dial-up to high-speed Internet connections. And at the same time AOL went from 30 million users to less than 10 million today. Actually is is surprising that they still have that many subscribers.
"they forgot what drove their success in the first place: innovation"
Here is where AOL missed the boat: they forgot what drove their success in the first place: innovation. Why did we all use AOL years ago in the first place? Because it was new, innovative, and it gave us something you couldn't get anywhere else.
By the late 1990's AOL started to fall behind, focusing on its proprietary software while the Internet and Google left them behind. AOL had enormous resources and instead of merging with Time Warner it should have bought Cable TV companies or Telecom companies. The focus should have been first on the technology and second on the content - instead they focused soley on content.
What should AOL be doing?
1. Capitalize on resources. AOL still has millions of subscribers, almost 100 million unique visitors to its network of websites, millions of AIM users, and thousands of employees. All of this is still significant and can be leveraged to do #2.
2. Develop something innovative. Think Google Wave, Twitter, or connecting AIM, AOL email, search and social media. AOL essentially had a "Facebook" back in the 1990's - most people used it at the time - they just stopped innovating.
3. Think and rely on more than just ad revenue for the future. Amazon has done a great job leveraging its assets to offer cloud hosting services. AOL had/has a huge worldwide network that could/should be leveraged to offer the ultimate in cloud computing and global load balancing services.
- Jared (Follow me on Twitter - @JaredStauffer)
The Downside of Being Ethical
Doing the right thing is usually not the easiest thing to do. This is no secret, but when you go through a situation where you make the right decision and get heck for it... it reminds you of how difficult it can be.
We are running a giveaway at br.st, our web-based Twitter client. We were a little disappointed with the press coverage we got at launch in mid-November. So we decided to do a giveaway to spread the word. It was always our hope that the people who won each giveaway would have a lot of followers, but the way we chose to pick the winners was by random drawing.
The first three Wii giveaways went to people with a low number of followers, but it wasn't until the first Mac giveaway on Friday that we started to get heat for the winner. Again we did a random drawing and the winner again had a low number of followers and was a low use account.
No one wanted the winner of our first big giveaway, a MacBook Pro, to go to someone who had a large number of followers more than us. At this point we had to make an ethical decision, but there was only one way go on this one.
So we announced the winner and almost immediately started catching heat, but we knew we made the right decision.
The Downside
- You can't game the outcome.
- Some people may not like you.
- People may criticize, ridicule, or make stuff up about you.
- You may question yourself.
The Upside
- Your conscience is clear.
- You don't have to make up other stuff to cover up your first lie / unethical decision.
- At least you / your company are getting talked about. Bad press = good press ??
How did we deal with it?
So now we knew we made the right decision and were catching flack for it. How did we handle it?
Don't take it personally. As much as it pained me to read people tweet that they thought we were running a scam or giving it to ourselves, I had to not take it personally and react from this offense.
Defend yourself, but only to a point. We reacted to the criticism with tweets and a blog post. But we had to leave it at that. You have to pick a point to stop reacting because at times a continued defense only emboldens the offense and it is difficult to not let it get personal.
Listen to the reasonable critiques, ignore the harsh stuff. The reasonable critiques will give you valuable information on how you can improve, but the harsh comments just need to be ignored.
The reality is that people will always find something to criticize about you. Remember this, if you are being criticized it means you showed up, you tried, you gave it a go - a lot of people don't even try.
- Jared (Follow me on Twitter - @JaredStauffer)
This Company Run By Real Humans
Most companies have people working at them, but how many companies have people that are truly engaged?
At my company, Brinkster - a web hosting co, we talk to hundreds of people a day through our live chat support system. Live chat is the single best thing to come to customer support since the dawn of the Internet. It allows almost instant answers to customers problems.
At the end of each live chat session our customers are asked to answer a quick survey about there experience. A few days ago a customer had this to say...
"Louise is a one woman customer service wrecking machine. She is taking travesties and turning them into sunshine... all with the click of a mouse and a wonderful spirit of care and compassion. Much thanks and appreciation!
"
In today's world where everything has a shortcut and a way around it, it can sometimes feel that robots are running the companies that we do business with instead of real people. By providing real service, from real people, solving real problems without cookie cutter solutions customers will feel that they are truly valued. And when customers feel truly valued they will become a live advertisement by simply sharing their experience.
I believe that in today's world we are seeing a shifting of the pendulum in many different areas. Customer service is one of them. As people have less money to spend and are a lot more picky about where they spend it, they are starting to choose companies that are run by real humans.
- Jared (Follow me on Twitter - @JaredStauffer)
ReTweet Tug of War: Twitter vs. Power Users
The battle over the new and old way of retweeting is in full swing. The battle between Twitter and its power users (who do most of the tweeting and retweeting) is raging in tweets and in comments on articles about the new feature.
On one side we have Twitter
- New RT preserves the integrity of the original tweet.
- New RT gives credit properly.
- Organic RTs are messy and come in different flavors.
- Organic RTs can be faked and become a form of spam and a problem for well-known people.
- Organic RTs can show up multiple times in your timeline if they are RT'd by multiple people you are following.
- New RTs are trackable due to being labeled as such behind the scenes, Organic RTs are not as trackable.
On the other side we have Power Users
- New RTs do not allow us to add our own thoughts.
- New RTs cannot be edited for length.
- New RTs insert unknown people in to your timeline.
- New RTs lack credibility because they do not show the person's picture who actually posted/submitted the tweet.
- New RTs promote the highly followed Twitter users (they get the most RTs) and do nothing for the person who submitted it.
Power users say the new retweet basically nullifies the power and purpose behind the retweet altogether.
My Take
I think that Twitter may be looking at the "issue" of retweets from a one-sided perspective. On the Twitter CEO's (@Ev) blog post on the topic he stated that having the picture of the person who did the retweeting in front of the retweet has no value. I totally disagree. Showing me the picture of the person that I am following gives the retweet credibility and adds value to the retweet. It does this because I, in theory, trust the person I am following more than I trust the person they retweeted.
"The new RT, like some first generation software, looks good, is missing some key features, and needs further development."
Power Twitter user's two main complaints about the new retweet is that it takes away the ability to add comments and that it does not give them enough credit for the tweet. This can be solved by showing the person's picture that did the retweeting next to the tweet author and allowing them to add their own opinion. (see graphic below)
Now that Tweetdeck has integrated the new retweet functionality it will be interesting to see if the power users embrace it (since many of them use this tool). For br.st we have decided to hold off on implementing it for awhile. Twitter must be a little uneasy and unsure about it as well since they started asking for your feedback about it on the right sidebar of Twitter.com after you login. 
Follow me (@jaredstauffer) on Twitter, if you are not already, and get updated when I post these juicy bits.