AOL Reinvents Itself as Anti-America Online

[Casino67]

Rightsidenews.com:

AOL's purchase of Huffington Post is not the beginning of a liberal new media monopoly, rather it's the prolonged death rattle of a company that has money, but no reason for existing. AOL started out as the country's biggest service provider, and is now nothing more than a third rate imitation of Yahoo, which is also struggling to survive.

High profile white elephant purchases by desperate dot coms are nothing new. AOL has been doing that for years. It bought Bebo for 850 million dollars and then sold it for 10 million dollars. It bought Xdrive for 30 million and then tried to sell it for 5 million a few years later. Now Huffington Post joins the ranks of Bebo and Xdrive. Another acquisition by a troubled company that has lost its customer base and can't figure out how to get a new one, except by buying up companies tapped into the business model of two years ago.

AOL has tried to sell subscription services. It even tried to give away its services for free. People not only won't pay for AOL, they won't even take it for free. So now it's investing big in content, in paid blogging and content farm spam-- at exactly the time when social media is eclipsing search. But that fits with every stupid decision AOL has ever made. Right back to the AOL-Time Warner merger where AOL's CEO somehow convinced Time Warner's CEO that an ISP dependent on dial up customers in the age of broadband was the perfect company to take over a media empire. There wasn't a worse possible time to buy Huffington Post then during a downturn in liberal popularity and the rise of social media driven sharing.

[pollyannaish]

AOL has to be one of the dumbest, least inventive companies in the world. They are to the internet companies, what Ted McGinley is to Television sitcoms.

[Sabre86]

I know of only two people who still use AOL as their ISP. Both live in the middle of no where, and AOL is the only ISP in the area they can connect to without having to dial long distance. However, for them, it is good enough. All they do is e-mail family and read the news.

[pollyannaish]

I know of only two people who still use AOL as their ISP. Both live in the middle of no where, and AOL is the only ISP in the area they can connect to without having to dial long distance. However, for them, it is good enough. All they do is e-mail family and read the news.

 

That make sense. But why would a company that serves the esoteric needs of a few specific parts of the country, with a very specific customer base buy something like the Huffington Post for billions of dollars?

 

It reminds me so much of what we heard during the dot com bubble. There's got to be money to be made somewhere in this...so we'll plow millions of dollars into it by throwing darts at a board and hoping for the best.

 

New technology does not negate hundreds of years of sound business principles. Business is always done by creating relationships. You can't buy those, you must build them and have them last. New tools or not.

[Sabre86]

I think they bought the HP simply because they are desperate. AOL is dying and they know it. When it happens, companies which still provide dial up access will buy up the parts which are still profitable, mostly in rural areas where broadband is not going to happens for ages, despite what Obama wants, and satellite internet is too expensive and too unreliable.