The tech community has enjoyed taking shots at Yahoo over the past 6 months. For years before that Microsoft was a great punching bag to beat up on. But if anyone has taken more abuse than Microsoft, it would be much maligned AOL.
For whatever reason, the portal and former ISP giant has been unable to shake the stigma of having dated technologies, business model, and content strategy. But as much as Silicon Valley likes to thrash the DC online company, AOL has been somewhat ahead of the curve in commercializing social media.
Unfortunately for AOL it seems a lot of these efforts are beginning to come apart.
AOL started their move into social media by acquiring the first attempted enterprise blogging network in Weblogs for $25 million in 2005. At the time the network of blogs included 50 blogs.
AOL’s next big move came when they launched FanHouse and grabbed sports blogger
AOL’s next big move came when they launched FanHouse and grabbed sports blogger thought leader,Jaime Mottram, to recruit the web’s best sports blogger to move over to the new blog hub. Jaime left Fanhouse almost a year ago to fill a similar role with Yahoo, who wanted to join AOL in trying to commercialize the sports blogosphere.
Fanhouse continued to be a modest success but Mottram’s departure was the first of a slew of key defections and setbacks to Fanhouse.
Shit Hitting the Fan
The past week, AOL has seen a handful of developments further hurting the public perception of their social media efforts. First came word that AOL was making cuts to the Webogs network (dumb move, do you really want hundreds of full time bloggers underemployed and bitter at you?). Then came the bigger story that AOL was making larger cuts to a variety of different business segments,
This week TechCrunch now implies that bloggers are limited in how much they can be paid for blogging despite AOL’s denials that they have capped content production . Meanwhile a less public problem has arisen as the remainder of bloggers at FanHouse are repulsed with FanHouses ‘partnership with Fantasy Sports Girls.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQngH_nnccM&hl=en&fs=1
The move has really irked the FanHouse veterans and has drawn criticism from across the blogosphere, and even drawn the ire of Mottram himself. The idea of scantily clad babes and sports is very solid, but Fanhouse bloggers are sad to see this lower form of sports commentary overshadow all the great work they have been doing on the site for years. Fantasy Sports Girls is a great great idea, but one that drastically is different from the tone and culture that FanHouse has strived to maintain.
With AOL curtailing compensation for Weblogs, and FanHouse ripping apart at the seems, its clear that despite AOL’s coreagoues and good intentioned forray into social media seems be crumbling at its core. AOL has valitated the space to some degree adding credibility to companies like Gawker, Federated Media, SB Nation, and ofcourse YardBarker, but in the end mismanagement, attention on the bottom line, and employee churn seems to have pulled the pin out of the AOL Social media grenade.
