PaidContent.org claims AOL is dressing itself up for a sale by slimming down. The Time Warner company on Thursday announced it was shutting down a few of its tech projects as well as a few of the
blogs in its Weblogs network. In a letter to staff, Kevin Conroy, AOL EVP of Products and Marketing, said that Bluestring, Xdrive, and AOL Pictures would "sunset" after failing to gain "sufficient
traction in the marketplace or the monetization levels necessary to offset the high cost of their operation." Meanwhile, the blog site myAOL will transform from a proprietary platform to open industry
standards, meaning the brand will be maintained, "but that's about it."
In other changes, AOL will stop investing in AIMWorld and will close down MyMobile next year in order to focus on
those products that actually make money (email, messaging, Web content and mapping). The AOL Video Portal is also merging with AOL Programming Video Experiences.
Conroy's team will now be
responsible for toolbar, mail, desktop apps and Truveo, AOL's video search site (AOL lost former Truveo CEO Tim Tuttle a few months ago). As Conroy said in his letter, "There was a time at AOL when
the strengths of our aggregate portfolio of products more than compensated for the weakness of an underperforming product. The realities of the industry and market shifts in online advertising no
longer make that possible. Simply put, every product makes a direct impact on our bottom line. With two quarters behind us, it is fair to say that results across the AOL products team have been
mixed."
Read the whole story at PaidContent.org »