Monday, February 7, 2011
So That's What Happened to AOL
Recently, I read an article that discussed AOL and how it was still generating income through its dial-up subscribers. At the time, I was shocked that AOL still found itself in the exact same business it was in nearly 15 years ago. Despite still being in that same dying industry it started 15 years ago, it appears AOL is attempting to once again establish its presence on the internet by purchasing Huffington Post. AOL is showing us that it is not planning on going softly into the night. Instead, it is beginning to shift its focus and pouring a large percentage of its current assets into a company with a very different business model than what it started with years ago. According to Alexa, Huffington Post is the 127th most visited site on the internet offering blogs, columnists, and news stores. Despite several failures in the past, it is necessary to give respect where respect is due; AOL is doing everything it can to stay afloat. If this acquisition turns into a success for the company, we might just see AOL clambering out if its grave and back into solid competition.
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Wow, that's interesting. I didn't realize AOL still existed as a company. I wonder if they will try to do anything completely innovative in the future or if they will just try to get by as long as they can.
ReplyDeleteI think they are just trying to limp on. If they change their name, I'll take it back. Under than AOL banner I don't see them doing anything new. They'll just use Huffington Post as a service of some kind to drive traffic to themselves.
ReplyDeleteThe sad thing is a lot of their profit from dial-up comes from elderly people that don't even need the dial-up. They have DSL or cable, but for some reason they think they need to keep paying AOL to keep their email address. Once all those people die (which probably won't be too long) they won't have very much money coming in.
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