Darko on June 16th, 2008
AOL has created a new Radio application for the Apple iPhone that will allow users to connect to AOL servers via EDGE, 3G or Wi-Fi and listen to local CBS radio stations. The application won an ‘Apple Design Award’ last week at the annual WWDC.
Making the app even more intriguing is that the service will be free, but ad-supported, just like traditional radio is. There will be over 200 AOL and 150 CBS stations available in 25 different genres.
Apple noted this about the application, “Reliable audio streaming and improved battery life are achieved by using AudioFileServices and AudioQueueServices, while SCNetwork manages the best narrowband or broadband streaming based on whether users are connected via EDGE or Wi-Fi.”
How is the quality though? AOL VP Kevin Conroy says it is “as good as listening to a CD”.
Darko on April 15th, 2008
Still playing catch-up to Yahoo, Google and other rivals around attracting Web site visitors, AOL is now adding Web content engine Sphere to its growing list of acquisitions.
Before snapping up Sphere this week for an estimated $25 million, AOL had partnered with the Silicon Valley start-up anyway, using the company’s widget-driven content search service for creating links from AOLnews.com and myAOL.com.
Soon after founding Sphere a couple of years ago, Sphere CEO Tony Conrad decided to gear the start-up to delivering “relevant” blog content to large news sites, signing up customers such as Time magazine.”Back when we released the Sphere Related Content Widget in 2006, the response told us we’d tapped into a new phenomenon of openness. A bit of a perfect storm [hit] as the launch of our service coincided with publishers starting to embrace the virtues of linking to content outside their site as well as exploring ways to connect to the broader conversation happening in the blogosphere,” Conrad wrote in his own blog this week.
Outside of its content search technology, Sphere offers a third-party network billed as containing more than 50,000 bloggers and other content publishers, who generate more than 2 billion article pages on the Web each month.
Despite AOL’s much pricier buyout of social networking site Bebo last month, many of AOL’s other recent acquisitions have fallen on the advertising rather than the content side.
These buyouts have included various constituent components of the company’s emerging Platform-A advertising platform: textual ad platform Quigo, mobile ad platform Third Screen Media; and behavioral ad platform Tacoda.
Largely as a result of these earlier acquisitions, AOL seems to be making faster progress in industry rankings on the advertising side than anywhere else.
But while Platform-A now tops all of AOL’s competitors with regard to reach, according to ComScore’s figures, AOL has remained in fourth place for all of this year in terms of numbers of unique visitors to its Web sites.
For the months of January through March, AOL’s Web site visitor statistics lagged behind those of Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft, in that order, with Fox Interactive landing in fifth place just as consistently. In fact, AOL’s “unique visitor’ figures actually dropped from about 109.4 million in January to 108.9 million in February, before rebounding in March to 111.8 million.
In contrast, industry leader Yahoo’s visitor numbers steadily surged from 136.7 million in January, to 138.0 million in February, to 139.5 million in March.
But as Conrad has suggested, AOL is now in the process of “reinventing” itself in more areas than advertising alone.
“In the past year, we’ve watched AOL as a partner, move aggressively to build their audience (new services, new Web site that interacts with users, acquisitions in the community space) and their Platform-A advertising business, and they’re making great progress on both fronts,” according to Conrad.
“We think it’s a huge advantage to become part of a suite of services that understands how Internet users access/consume content, and how to intelligently monetize in tandem with that content,” Conrad wrote.
Darko on April 14th, 2008
The average Russian Internet user went online 13 days in February, spent an average of 82 minutes per day online, and viewed 2,322 pages of content during the month according to comScore World Metrix.
Russian language search engine Yandex reached 62 percent of the Russian online audience, making it the leading Web property in February, followed by Mail.Ru sites (51% reach), Rambler Media (49 percent reach), AOL (42 percent reach) and Google Sites (41% reach).
AOL properties also were ahead of Google Sites for time spent. The average minutes per visitor for the month on AOL was 178, while visitors to Google Sites averaged 58 minutes for the month.
Social networking is popular in Russia with a few social networking sites ranking among the top properties. Odnoklassniki.Ru was the seventh most visited property with an audience reach of 30 percent, while Vkontake.Ru ranked just behind. Vkontake.Ru saw solid engagement of its users, who spent an average of 689 minutes on that site during the month.
Yandex led all search properties with 47. 4 percent of all searches conducted in Russia, followed by Google sites (31.2%), Rambler Media (9.7%), Mail.Ru Sites (7%), and Yahoo Sites (1.3%).
“The Russian Internet market has been experiencing rapid development, with its audience growing 25 percent during the past year,” said Linda Boland Abraham, comScore Executive Vice President.
“Several Russian Internet brands are leading the way, so it’s clear that there are strong opportunities for Internet-based businesses as this market continues to expand.”
Darko on April 11th, 2008
Microsoft moved swiftly in response to yesterday’s news that Yahoo is closing in on a deal with AOL. The software giant is reportedly joining forces with News. Corp. to submit a joint offer for Yahoo.
The News Corp.-Microsoft alliance was reported by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
Under the agreement, News Corp. would throw in some cash to buy Yahoo, and the three companies (Microsoft, Yahoo and News Corp.) would presumably combine their online assets, which include MSN, Yahoo and MySpace. The Times says it’s a shift in strategy for News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, who reportedly met with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang early on and offered to help fend off Microsoft.
Under the terms of the Yahoo-AOL deal, Time Warner would pawn off AOL assets (excluding the dialup ISP) on Yahoo, put up a cash investment in the combined company, and take a 20 percent equity stake in it. Yahoo would use the Time Warner cash to buy back a few billion dollars in stock to drive the share price back up, thus potentially appeasing disgruntled investors.
It’s not really clear that the AOL agreement would do much to satisfy unhappy investors, though. Yahoo would still be plagued by the same operational problems that it had before the Microsoft takeover bid. And winning AOL, which may be valued at $10 billion under the arrangement, isn’t much of a prize.
“We think shareholders would prefer to cash out via a Microsoft offer — with or without News Corp. — rather than keep Yahoo in the hands of current Yahoo management with the addition of a troubled asset called AOL,” says Laura Martin, an analyst with Soleil-Media Metrics. “I think Yahoo management has lost its credibility in terms of execution and strategy — not just because of its operational weakness, but also because of how they have handled the Microsoft bid.”
The developments are unfolding just days after Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer served Yahoo with an ultimatum: If a deal is not sealed in three weeks time (which implies a deadline of April 26), Microsoft will launch a proxy battle to take over Yahoo’s board.
Yahoo responded to the threat on Monday by suggesting the ball was in Microsoft’s court. “We continue to believe that your proposal is not in the best interests of Yahoo and our stockholders,” a letter from Jerry Yang and chairman Roy Bostock said. The letter also said the board wasn’t opposed to a deal with Microsoft, but not for $31 per share.
