AOL

I've written several times that I thought AOL and Yahoo should merge and create a very strong force in both the content and advertising spaces. After what I've seen Yahoo do to itself over the past couple of months, I no longer believe that a combination would be good for AOL. During my time at Graphing Social Patterns this week, I met a large number of AOL'ers who all explained to me how great times are at AOL these days. From what they told me, morale appears quite high. It seems like all of the wheels are in motion. Could AOL take Yahoo's slot in the ranks? Might have seemed crazy 18 months ago but not so crazy anymore. I used to believe in Yahoo - can't say I do today.

If AOL management was smart, they would call a company-wide meeting and get the horses moving even faster and explain that there's a chance now to step into a leading role and take Yahoo's place in the ranks. I can only imagine that the morale at Yahoo must be horrible right now. Yahoos are leaving left and right and the company just signed itself away to the devil. Shareholders may love the deal in the short-term (they don't care about people) but in the long-term, it will hurt Yahoo way more than help. And this is why AOL should do what it can to take every ounce of life that Yahoo has left. Offer incentives to Yahoo advertisers to switch, hire key Yahoos and continue to ramp up the content development effort.

AOL should also ramp up their OpenSocial effort even more and maybe win developers away from Yahoo. Imagine if developers got behind AOL as well?

AOL's deal with Google for advertising will continue to fly under the radar and I think it's fine for AOL to continue the deal. Eventually I'd like to see Platform-A take over ad sales but let's first get part I done. Steve Poland disagrees and adds his views on why AOL and Yahoo should still merge.

Is AOL perfect? Heck no. But would any dealings with Yahoo now help the company? Heck no.

Today at Graphing Social Patterns, executives from hi5, AOL, MySpace and imeem provided updates on their OpenSocial platform usage. Patrick Chanezon from Google opened by explaining that Chinese service OpenPNE out of China and StudiVZ out of Germany are the two newest OpenSocial providers. He also shared some updated stats:

-- 19 days in production
-- 275 million users
-- 66 million installs
-- 2,000 applications built on OpenSocial
-- 20,000 developers
-- 10 million daily app users

AOL

The AOL OpenSocial discussion was brief as the panel was almost out of time but the discussion focused on the third-party and advertising aspects.

imeem

imeem focused on music and showed off some basic OpenSocial goodies you could build on imeem. Apparently you can access the entire music library on imeem using OpenSocial.

MySpace

MySpace came out of the gate boasting how large they are and noted they are twice as large as the nearest competitor (without naming Facebook). The pitch was simple, "want to reach the largest OpenSocial community? Build on MySpace." Staggering stat: 12% of all Internet minutes are spent on MySpace! The MySpace guy wouldn't answer my question about the costs associated with being a "featured app" - said something about being a developer and not a business guy. I don't buy it for a minute mister!

hi5

For some reason, the hi5 guy decided to open by putting on a gray shirt - he said that all business people wear blue shirts and khaki pants (luckily he didn't take his pants off!) - the stunt didn't seem to get much of a reaction from the audience. It felt like hi5 was the little engine that could from his presentation. They do have very strong adoption of the OpenSocial apps by their community.

AOL is announcing a new partnership with CBS today and the re-launch of its AOL Radio destination site. Over 350 radio channels are available including 200 CBS channels and 200 AOL radio channels plus user-generated custom channels.

The new player works on both Mac and PC, create preset channels and click back to the last 30 songs you've listened to. You can also share songs with friends and run a mini-player inside of AIM.

As of April 2008, comScore ranks AOL radio as the most trafficked radio site online.

NYC's 1010 WINS is one of the new stations available on AOL Radio. Growing up, this was the only station that worked on the shower radio - everyday I heard "you give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the world." I wonder if it's still 22 minutes today.

AOL is announcing that their Platform-A advertising network and platform is expanding into Europe. There will also be "alignment" of the AOL advertising-related operations in Europe which include: ADTECH (not the conference), Advertising.com, buy.at, Quigo, Tacoda and Third Screen Media.

Brendan Condon will lead the new European Platform-A operations. Condon previously was head of Advertising.com's International business.

AOL operates sites in 13 European countries and don't forget their recent Bebo acquisition. It will be interesting to see if AOL attempts to launch more content sites in Europe as they are here in the U.S.

AOL has launched another Web property today. This time its a parenting resource named ParentDish. The site features videos, celebrity content and blog posts for families with kids of all ages. This new site is part of AOL's strategy to launch at least 12 new Web properties in 2008. ParentDish is part of AOL Family which includes: AOL Food, AOL Body, AOL Home and StyleList.

Advertising will be served by AOL's Platform-A network and Quigo. The initial parenting expert featured on ParentDish is Rachel Campos-Duffy. The site is heavy on ads and feels a bit "loose" in design. There are tons of links to other AOL sites including every site in the Weblogs network which is owned by AOL.

I think this content strategy from AOL is very smart. Stick to creating sites in the most ad-rich demographics and ignore the sectors that don't pay bupkus. My guess is that most of the sites AOL launches this year will all be niche areas off of women and lifestyle content.

Uhm, where's the tie into Bebo?

It's over. The potential marriage of Yahoo and Microsoft is over. Check out the aftermath coverage here, here and here. I am not going to paste the entire letter that Microsoft's Ballmer sent to Yahoo's Yang - you can read it on the Microsoft press site. The net result is that the deal isn't going through (at least for now) and so now the next batch of speculation begins -- what will Microsoft do and what will Yahoo do?

I've said for years now (many years before CN) that Yahoo and AOL needed to merge. It would have been a mega-merger years ago but would still be huge even today. I touched on it a year ago on CN. Both AOL and Yahoo are consumer-facing Internet companies. Microsoft is not and to try to just plug Yahoo is would be very difficult. While there is a good bit of overlap with AOL and Yahoo but the ability to maximize the mainstream is the key.

AOL is looking to launch a large number of content sites this year, they have Platform-A for advertising and the number one IM client out there. Don't forget Bebo as well. Yahoo brings some semi-powerful social apps and a huge content network along with some leading Web apps.

Yahoo working with Google is not a smart strategic move for Yahoo in the long-term. Sure it might boost their bottom line today but it will hurt their consumer and business confidence levels over time.

Now let's make it happen.

AOL is announcing the launch of their Open Voice API today. The Open Voice API will work with the AIM Call Out service which allows users of AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) to call out worldwide. I guess AIM Call Out could be considered a Skype competitor though it's not as feature rich or as polished an application.

The new API will allow developers to create applications that build on the AIM Call Out functionality and use devices including softphones and mobile devices with WiFi capabilities. Steve Murphy, Senior Vice President, AOL said, "We’re building on the popularity of the Open AIM program and opening up the AIM Call Out platform, enabling open standards voice communication services to proliferate in the marketplace." Check out the developer guidelines for the API.

Both AOL Call Out and Skype's "Skype Out" service charge per minute and offer monthly unlimited plans.

Mediapost is reporting that AOL is currently developing a new Web site for young women. Last month we learned that AOL would be going for a large number of new site launches in 2008 so I assume this new young women's site will be one of those.

This is a smart move by AOL as they can begin to win over women while they are young and hopefully as they mature in age, they can slide into one (or more) of the other AOL offerings. In addition, women's interest Web sites are one of the most lucrative from an advertising perspective, both in advertising rates and engagement by users. Of course it's important to note that online there are very low switching costs so AOL needs to make sure the site is sticky, very sticky.

Now if AOL was really smart, they would begin to offer start pages by category that pull in content from all of their content offerings. Otherwise AOL might become like CNET which is like trying to navigate a zoo without a map.

Looks like the new property won't be solely a blog as they are seeking someone with AP writing style experience.

AOL is announcing that their Platform-A advertising group will manage the mobile and online advertising for Verizon today. Platform-A will manage all of Verizon's online advertising and most of the mobile advertising as well.

AOL also notes, "Platform-A will be the only sales organization that can represent Verizon’s inventory in the marketplace and guarantee placement within the Verizon network."

No indication was provided on total number of advertising impressions this deal covers.

With AOL's acquisition of Bebo yesterday, and now discussion of a possible KickApps acquisition by AOL, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some other content candidates for AOL acquisition. If AOL is going to get serious about stepping back into the major leagues, they need more top notch content sites. All of these acquisition ideas would work well with Userplane, AIM, ICQ and Bebo, all AOL-owned companies.

CafeMom

This NY-based startup is targeted at moms and would be an excellent complement for AOL's branded Web sites. CafeMom is currently serving 100 million pageviews and an average of 200 pages per user per month. This would make a great place for Platform-A and could be an extension for the Bebo "engagement marketing" platform. (our coverage)

Dogster/Catster

A niche social network for barking and meowing, Dogster and Catster could fit into the AOL branded sites as well. An acquisition of Dogster and Catster by AOL would give both sites new distribution opportunities along with a new advertising partner. (our coverage)

TripAdvisor

I am guessing that a decent percentage of TripAdvisor users are already AOL customers, either as dial-up, broadband or Web site visitors. TripAdvisor is currently owned by Expedia but I think the match would be better with AOL -- could replace the AOL Travel site. The TripAdvisor network serves pages to 60 million unique visitors a month and includes 8 web sites including my favorite, SeatGuru. (our coverage)

SimplyHired

It seems in the time since I started CN there's been chatter here and there about SimplyHired being acquired by someone. It's a better acquisition target than going after a job site as SimplyHired would give AOL the best of both worlds: all the job listings from the major job boards plus the ability to enhance listings to generate even more revenue. The publisher job board option would give AOL a potential "in" to publishers to push Platform A and other potential partnerships. (our coverage)

Which services do you think would be a good fit for AOL?

Editor's note: KickApps is a sponsor on our sister site, HTMLCenter.