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)