Being a former AOL employee and still having many friends that work in the Northern Virginia offices, I take notice when company news is released.  When I heard last night that the rumors about Microsoft or Yahoo buying AOL were heating up again, I was a little surprised.  What was even more surprising was that when I pinged my friends at AOL this morning looking for scoop, I got nothing, nada, zip.  They hadn’t heard anything, no buzz, no rumblings.  So, this begs the question…if employees at AOL don’t care about what happens to AOL, why should anyone else? 

Many would argue (me being one of them) that AOL is a dinosaur, slowly dying off piece-by-piece.  Although AOL launches new sites as part of their growth strategy, they don’t brand these new sites heavily with AOL.  I’m assuming this is due to the negative brand association.  Most consumers probably don’t realize that TMZ (celebrity gossip powerhouse) is part of AOL and if they did, would they still visit?  Another example launched just a few weeks ago — tourtracker.com.

In our Facebook, Twitter world - are big portals (Yahoo!, MSN, AOL) even relevant?  Since I am a creature of habit, I still use AOL.com to check my weather and news, but I am slowly transitioning to other sites and visiting AOL less.  Many people still visiting AOL – over 200 million unique visitors per month.  So, just based on sheer numbers, I’ll concede that AOL is still a player.  Unfortunately, size is also what has kept AOL from staying ahead of the curve. 

So, back to the dinosaur analogy, whose time also came and went, AOL is approaching extinction and it appears not many people care. 

Filed under: Off Topic on Friday, July 18th, 2008 by Koren Henderson |
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.