What, exactly, is going to turn AOL around? John Batelle talks to company CEO Jonathan Miller about his proposal to the Time Warner board about reshaping the future of the once-mighty Internet service
provider and Web portal. For years, Time Warner stock buckled under the dead weight of its partner-turned-subsidiary, on whose worth "Wall Street placed a big, fat zero" says Battelle. In 2002, media
veteran Jonathan Miller was brought in to save the flagging company; so far that hasn't happened, but Miller's new proposal could spur things in the right direction, though skepticism remains high.
For years, Miller admits, innovation at AOL "was locked behind the subscriber wall," but the company is now trying to put "all of AOL out on the Web." It's got plenty of new products: among them,
In2TV, a broadband video channel, and a new IM-based, social networking product called AIM Pages, which Miller is quick to point out comes pre-equipped with 80 million users. AOL's ad revenue compared
favorably with just about everybody else, he says, and the renegotiated ad deal with Google, for example, was a good thing for the company--it showed how AOL has real value again. The search deal with
Google should help text revenues grow, Miller said, while the string of video acquisitions the company has made will help AOL add its video to search.
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