AOL Archive

While at SXSW this week, I met with Shawn, the AOL product manager over the new AOL Lifestream product. AOL Lifestream brings together a variety of social services including Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Flickr, YouTube, MySpace, etc. The service is available on the iPhone, Android and on the desktop.

Interestingly, AOL now allows you to post status updates to AOL along with the other services you select. AOL Lifestream also allows you to follow places and find updates related to a place. So if you are interested in a certain hotel, bar, etc. you can subscribe to that location and any updates will hit your stream. To make these location pages very valuable, AOL will need to aggregate additional services including Yelp and even Google results (blog, web, news, etc.).

Similar to Google launching Buzz inside of Gmail to gain an instant audience, AOL Lifestream has the same instant audience as the new version of AIM includes the Lifestream product.

I asked Shawn about the comparisons to FriendFeed, his response is worth listening to.

Check out the video demo below.
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Earlier this week, I took a look at the social news service Propeller and wondered if the service was coming in for a landing. Since that post, one of Propeller’s users submitted the CN story to Propeller and I thought it might be interesting to see what we got from the submission.

The story was posted on Propeller 27 hours ago as of the time of this blog post. The story (as seen below) has received:

• 45 props (these are the up votes)
• 2 drops (I guess these are like down votes)
• 60 views listed on Propeller (not sure if this is how many people visited the page on Propeller or something else?)
• 247 comments!

I count 16 total pageviews in my analytics software using the propeller.com referral domain. This means that nearly none of the people who commented on the story actually read the story. This is an issue for most social news sites – and I think will be an issue for Buzz as well. Outbound traffic is the only real measure for a social news site – the more traffic that the service sends out, the more people want to invest in it.

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Let’s start this journey by taking a ride back in time. Some of you are too young to remember the Internet of the early 90s. Back then one of the most popular ways to get “online” was to use AOL. This was the popular online service that came via disks you received in the mail. Prodigy and Compuserve were on their way out and this new service AOL was the darling of the time. I went to college in a small town in upstate New York which had no local number for AOL. I had to call to Albany to access AOL. And boy did I access AOL. One of my first months I received a phone bill for over $500 in long-distance charges (where was Vonage back then?!?) and that didn’t even include the AOL access fees. I still use the same username on AOL today that I originally registered way back then.

AOL was exciting – you could read news, send and receive email, play games, IM chat with friends, go into chat rooms based around topics, search for content, listen to music, send eCards, customize the home page to suit your preferences and a variety of other online tasks. In later versions of the AOL desktop, a Web browser was included and other “partners” were added to allow for additional content and, what I will call, applications.

It sure does seem that the more we try to move the Internet forward, the more things seem to copy the old. So with that said, allow me to introduce you to the next version of AOL… AOL 2.0… otherwise known as Facebook.

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eBay company StubHub has announced a new partnership with AOL Music today. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Basically StubHub will be integrated all over AOL Music so people can buy and sell tickets (and pay comissions to StubHub) from practically anywhere on the site. From the release, “this includes AOL’s Artist & Video pages, as well as AOL Music’s concert touring website, TourTracker. For the first time, users can also see up-to-the minute concert ticket price ranges on StubHub’s marketplace without ever leaving AOL Music. ”

“Allowing our consumers to purchase tickets to sold-out shows through StubHub will significantly enhance our user experience,” said Bill Crandall, vice president of AOL Music.

AOL announced today that their online coupon application shortcuts.com is now supporting Safeway (a supermarket chain). Safeway has 1,554 stores in 22 states and the District of Columbia. Shortcuts.com allows you to pick coupons online and they automatically get deducted at checkout – no more coupon clipping.

I’ve spent a number of years working with retailers and their frequent shopper cards. I have a variety of frequent shopper cards including CVS, Kroger, Cosi, etc. I also have a few bank cards that I use at ATM machines that are owned by the bank.

Why can’t any of these systems get smarter with regards to receipts. Apple allows you to provide an email address and have a receipt emailed to you. The few times I’ve purchased items at the Apple Store, it’s worked perfectly – the emails will usually hit my mobile before I even leave the store.

CVS knows my email address – can’t they just email me the receipt each time I shop? It would help me manage my books, it would help CVS save money on the receipt printing and would save a number of trees (how many I have no idea but certainly a good number).

Banks are even worse with regards to receipts. Let’s not even talk about the fact that my bank knows I speak English – why they prompt me for 7 other languages is beyond me (and could be a security risk). With so many banks offering online banking, can’t they too email me a receipt when I complete a transaction? If they removed the language question and the receipt question, they could easily shave 10-15 seconds off the total transaction time. I can’t imagine it would be hard – the bank already knows my email address and they could offer a button that allows me to enter my pin and get a hardcopy receipt or enter my pin and get a receipt via email. Sure this won’t work when I use a foreign ATM, but I bet the majority of transactions are made at one of your own bank’s ATM.

So many of the things we do on a daily basis could be made smarter and save us time and natural resources. Ok, I’m done ranting…leave your thoughts on how machines like ATMs and cash registers can become smarter.

After the major launch of “Where It’s At” yesterday, today AOL has announced the launch of the AOL portal to the UK market. Last month we wondered why AOL pushed their big acquisition of Bebo aside to pimp Facebook and Twitter. The good news is that it seems Bebo is one of the top four being pushed in the UK version of the portal service.

It appears in the UK users prefer different types of content than we do here in the U.S. Here are some of the differences between the UK and US AOL portal sites:

UK version of My Stuff – shows Horoscopes over AOL Radio – all other items are the same

UK version of My Networks – here we see the UK version pushing Bebo over AIM and also pushes Twitter to slot 4 while the US version pimps Twitter first (which is a huge mistake) and doesn’t even list Bebo in the top 4.

The content and stories on the UK version appear to be UK-based which is a good thing.

AOL’s publishing unit MediaGlow has announced the launch of their newest website today called “Where It’s At”. It’s a site that they describe as, “serving as a guided tour of iconic pop culture landmarks from music, film and television, complete with photos and background stories on why the landmarks are famous.”

Bill Crandall, vice president, AOL Music said regarding the Where It’s At launch, “Where It’s At is the ultimate pop culture treasure map that we get to build together with our audience”. The map shows the entire world yet the locations seem to be limited to the U.S. There are about 200 spots listed in a variety of categories and locations. You can naturally interact with the team on Twitter and via RSS.

Adena at the All Points Blog has some suggestions for the Where It’s At team including not linking to Google Maps and some confusion as to what the site actually offers (i.e. nightlife or location-based trip planning). This seems to be the weakest of all of the sites that AOL has launched over the past year. This almost looks like they put it together as a quickie site for VISA. I hope the other 29 sites that AOL MediaGlow plans to launch this year are stronger than this one.

Here’s an example of the location spots on the MapQuest-powered map, this time it’s Britney Spears’ Quickie Wedding Chapel – the place she married Jason Alexander back in 2004.