Thursday, October 14, 2004
AOL Launching New AOL.com To Compete With The Big Three
AOL is expected to launch its redesign of AOL.com today, according to Business Week. AOL is adding new features in an attempt to boost traffic, and thus, ad sales, which now lag far behind Google, Yahoo and MSN. In the second quarter of this year, AOL ad sales totaled $221 million, less than half of Yahoo's $467 million, this despite AOL having more people online for longer periods of time than any online service.
The redesign will come loaded with new content and features, including a news ticker and beefed-up sports and music. Currently, the site is mainly used by AOL subscribers looking to check their email from the road, and AOL hopes the changes will give visitors a reason to check out the rest of the site. But much more so, AOL plans to finally open the site to non-subscribers, which should do a much better job of increasing traffic. While AOL wants to lure regular internet users to its site with new content, it must still balance that with the exclusive content it wants to keep inside the AOL service, so it doesn't hemorrhage any more subscribers than it already has. AOL's subscriber base has dropped 12% from a high of 26.7 million two years ago.
Right now, the AOL.com site appears to be down, which should mean the upgrade is happening as we speak.
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So I've heard. The launch is about twenty feet from where I'm sitting. I'll have a quick post as soon as my camera is working, then I'll go talk to the Google people here and give you more info.
Not this time, but I'm grateful for the heads-up. I'm hoping more readers contact me when they notice stuff like that, so I can be even faster with the news.
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