AOL Home Archive

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?

AOL is announcing the launch of their revamped AOL Home site today. The updated site has the following channels of content: decorating, entertaining, green content, organizational information and DIY content.

The content will come from magazines including: GoodHousekeeping.com, Redbookmag.com, CountryLiving.com, HouseBeautiful.com, RealSimple and This Old House.

While most will consider it "just another home content site" what it does it keep users within the AOL family of sites where they can continue to monetize the user versus sending the user off to another home site.

The home page has a section named, "Home Blogs We Love" which seems like a great idea but all of the links are to AOL properties! It would be better if they spread the love — not just for the other bloggers to gain valuable links and traffic but could also help AOL Home to gain some visibility from other bloggers as well.

This site is very interesting to me as I was lead on a project in my former corporate life from 2001-2004 that was very similar – in fact we had the same content partners!