• Mediaweek, Tuesday, January 13, 2009 11:46 AM

AOL, which like Yahoo is in a never-ending quest to reinvent itself, announced today that it's forming two new divisions. One, called People Networks, will focus on the Time Warner company's social media properties, while the other, called MediaGlow, encompasses AOL's network of 70 niche content sites. According to MediaGlow President Bill Wilson, the network will soon grow to over 100 sites.

"We're not counting on our portal to drive traffic," Wilson told Mediaweek. "That's such a difference from where we sat three years ago...we're really leaning into the fragmentation of the Web very aggressively. Clearly we are doubling down here. This is a reinvention of AOL. It's a transformation of the company."

The "transformation" that Wilson refers to has seen AOL shift its business model from a walled-in, subscription-based portal to a free, ad-supported content destination. Now, AOL is focused on monetizing what has become one of the Web's largest advertising networks. As a result, Wilson says, the new AOL "means different things to different people, especially in the lean-forward world of the blogoshere." Meanwhile, one wonders whether that kind of fragmentation is a good thing for a company that was once the Internet's mightiest brand.

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