aol
Aol dials up the stupid with 150 editorial layoffs
Aol dials up the stupid with 150 editorial layoffs
Brianna Royce, Editor in Chief of Massively, the MMORPG arm of popular gaming blog Joystiq, which is also going away, talking about Aol Corporate’s most recent stupidity:
I would like to be able to tell you truthfully that this is an equitable and just decision that makes some sort of logical sense, but the reality is that our overlords’ decisions have always been unfathomable. I know more of what I know about corporate from reading tech and finance news than through my own job. We all suspected this was coming eventually a year ago when a VP whose name I don’t even know and who never read our site chose to reward our staggering, hard-won 40% year-over-year page view growth by… hacking our budget in half. There’s nothing to do in the face of that kind of logic but throw your hands in the air.
Aol still depends, yes, depends on its dial-up revenue to survive. That is why these popular sites have been euthanized and at least 150 people laid off. Because Aol leadership, millionaires all, can’t figure out how to run their company.
Aol owns The Huffington Post, TechCrunch and at least a couple of other very successful blogs. There are people working there who know how to run a profitable blog. Is it executive hubris that prevents the brass from asking someone what the hell to do?
I hate to be morbid but thetruth is that some day relatively soon everyone willing to endure dial-up will be dead. What will Aol do then?
I don’t know, but more importantly, and infuriatingly when it means people lose their jobs, neither does anyone at Aol.
$12M CEO vs. $1M baby
The wife of an AOL employee, commenting on the company’s chief executive using her child’s premature birth as an example of why the company was cutting benefits:
I take issue with how he reduced my daughter to a “distressed baby” who cost the company too much money. How he blamed the saving of her life for his decision to scale back employee benefits. How he exposed the most searing experience of our lives, one that my husband and I still struggle to discuss with anyone but each other, for no other purpose than an absurd justification for corporate cost-cutting.
The view from the top is one of digits and dollar signs, not daughters and dignity.
CrunchBase and People+ settle
A TechCrunch reporter had this to say about his employer’s sister product:
Put another way: The CrunchBase team ended up looking like it didn’t really understand how Creative Commons worked, or at least that’s what the vast majority of online commentary suggested.
Mutually agreeable settlement is always the best outcome. Although judging by the comment from CrunchBase President Matt Kaufman near the bottom of the TechCrunch post I linked to, Aol still doesn’t understand Creative Commons at all.
AOL lawyers don't understand Creative Commons. At all.
AOL lawyers don’t understand Creative Commons. At all.
David Kravets writes at Wired about AOL’s demand that an app called People+ stop using a complete replica of AOL’s tech company database.
AOL’s CrunchBase is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution:
We provide CrunchBase’s content under the Creative Commons Attribution License [CC-BY].
However, the terms of service for the same product say, with my emphasis:
CrunchBase reserves the right in its sole discretion (for any reason or for no reason) and at anytime without notice to You to change, suspend or discontinue the CrunchBase API and/or suspend or terminate your rights under these General Terms of Service to access, use and/or display the CrunchBase API, Brand Features andany CrunchBase content.
Actually, as AOL attorneys should know (but apparently don’t), the company cannot reserve any such right at all, at least as to any data accessed, used or displayed while the Creative Commons license is still in effect, which it is as of November 6, 2013.
AOL can legally prohibit future access, use and display, but once content is under a Creative Commons attribution license one reserves no rights whatsoever, except the right to attribution.
It’s baffling that AOL lawyers would assert otherwise.
Tim Stevens is no longer editor-in-chief at Engadget
Tim Stevens is no longer editor-in-chief at Engadget
Two years is a good run, and the site looks and reads far better than it did before his reign, but Tim Stevens’ exit from his role as editor-in-chief at Aol property Engadget is bad sign for the site and it’s owner.
It’s never a good sign, in business or blogging (and especially when your product is a hybrid), when a leadership role is vacated before a replacement is appointed.
Alto: Aol's attempt to redesign email
Alto: Aol’s attempt to redesign email
Austin Carr, writing at Fast Company's Co.Design blog:
It’s actually proved to be a more modern and nimble alternative to many of its mainstream counterparts, and boasts many novel features that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, even with its beautiful redesign of Outlook, should all heed lessons from.
His review has some images and a really good explanation of how Alto feels. Fast Company's Adam Bluestein spoke with Alto's team leads, and that article is also worth a look.
The articles compare Alto to Pinterest, but it looks to me more like Evernote, with note titles and summaries on the left and notebooks in a larger “stack” layout pane on the right. Regardless, it looks elegant and functional, which is what I want from websites and apps. I’m really impressed by how it looks and the philosophy behind what they did, including empowering an insular team to build it outside of Aol’s larger structure.
In fact, Alto looks so well-designed that, if I was in charge at Aol, I probably would have had them launch without much of a mention of Aol at all. It’s unfortunate but true that the Aol brand is really a handicap to anyone trying to do something as bold as redesigning how we use email. Some people may see “Alto, by Aol” and skip it altogether. I almost did.
Alto works with many popular email services, including Gmail, so I’m excited to see how it works. You can request an invite here. I’ll write something more in-depth when I get the chance to try it out.