AOL CEO Jonathan F. Miller tells BusinessWeek: “There’s no return to the walled garden whatsoever. This gives the company a chance to play it big.” (Of course, AOL still has a walled garden inhabited by millions of AOL subscribers — it’s just not keeping everything behind the subscription walls anymore.) BW calls the move AOL’s chance “to catch up to the Broadband Age.”
The new AOL is a federation of sites, not just a portal. (My words, not theirs.) If you want to get some sense of what’s coming in July, take a look at AOL Music with its emphasis on exclusive events, celebrities, streaming video/audio, bold images, user controls to move through featured content. Other sites will include one for short films by unknowns, joint efforts with various Time Warner siblings (WB comes to mind as a natural with its emphasis on teen culture, music, etc.).
All of this is part of the search for high-margin ad dollars.
The WSJ adds its riff to the drumroll, offering more proof that some walls will stay up. Parental controls, some children’s content and the aol.com address — the three features cited most often as reasons for subscribing — won’t be replicated.
Julia Angwin offers some numbers of note: AOL and its affiliated sites get nearly as much traffic as Yahoo and its network but only take in $1 billion in ad revenues compared to while Yahoo’s take is close to three times as much. The development cost of the launch is estimated at $400-500 million.
Users will be able to choose from two home pages — the traditional customizable portal front with news feeds (RSS?) or, a version that sounds a little like Comcast’s fan, a “Video Hub” with search access to all of AOL’s video.
One last tidbit from the Journal: AOL is adding “invisible” code to its web pages for search optimization.
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