AOL Tries Something New *Yawn*  

Posted by Peter Inthirakoth in , , ,


Still looking for ways to recapture their 90's era popularity, American Online (AOL) has launched Owl. Owl is a site focused on user-generated content using AOL's content management system called "Seed."

The site will be a repository where freelance "experts" can provide knowledge, opinions, and images. Crowdsourcing the articles should allow AOL to increase the content on the site quickly and cheaply.

Contributors to the site will be paid 50% of the profits from advertising if the content is exclusive and 20% if not. Techcrunch did note that the site is more of a design concept and that most of the articles seemed to have been written by the staff.

Read the story here.

4 comments

David Culp   says February 1, 2010 at 12:57 PM

AOL has fallen a long way since the 2001 merger with Time Warner. I remember at the time business pundits were saying that Time Warner was being gobbled up by AOL, not the other way around. Now Time Warner has effectively discarded AOL. Some of their ideas such as this Owl site and TMZ are more in line with Web 2.0, but they have the air of desperation to them, and may just serve to further fragment the brand identity. Gone are the days of "You've got mail!"

Chelsea Bruha   says February 1, 2010 at 1:16 PM

I remember reading an article about the CEO of AOL and how he is in desperate need of a hip replacement, but he is refusing to undergo that surgery until he makes some kind of dramatic turn with AOL. That kind of passion is something we don't see everyday.
The problem is, I really don't think that AOL will be able to turn themselves around and be able to compete with the big guys. I am definitely rooting for them, mostly because I love an "underdog becoming the top dog" storyline, but I really do not think that the brand and the customer following is enough to make this happen.
It will be interesting to see how this new OWL will go- they are definitely using their resources effectively.

Chelsea Bruha   says February 1, 2010 at 1:16 PM
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dr. Raj Murthy   says February 2, 2010 at 12:48 PM

Chelsea is talking about the BusinessWeek article from last month. He may be the guy to change everything but AOL is too set in its way to really pull a game changing move. Like David says "You got mail" really has no significance anymore. It may be a new experiment and since it stays in the sandbox it may never prove viable. I would watch this to see where it goes.

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