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AOL To Launch Blogging Service
Jorkapp writes "Later this summer, AOL will launch its 'AOL Journals' blog service, provided free to its members. AOL Journals (named as such, since a survey showed the average user found the word 'blog' to be confusing) will allow users to post text, pictures, and voice entries. More information can be found at the Washington Post."
Bloogle, anyone?
I wish AOL would fix what they have first before adding new things like this Blogger that others likely do better anyway:
Specifically, their e-mail system:
1) They have absolutely no spam filtering (ability to get only e-mail from approved addresses, or blocking the exact address a spam comes from does not count). The free services have better e-mail than AOL.
2) They don't have a way to download complete intact e-mails (file cabinet does not handle attachments.
3) They have a "feature" that destroys e-mails that are left in the inbox for more than a few weeks. Since they make it tough to download them, this means you have to constantly forward them to yourself to keep them there.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
..that blogging can be officially declared out, just as the newsgroups was when someone let the hordes from AOL in.
On the other hand, it's good to see that an IPS can do more than just take your money and provide shitty service :-)
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
about content ownership? With all these blog hosting services... do the licenses permit them to republish your information? What kind of information are they gathering out of all those blogs, neatly stored on their servers?
We freak out about the government wanting to pry into anything, yet we see no issue when the largest ISP on earth wants to encourage everyone to post their innermost thoughts online for all to see, to be forever archived by the googlebot?
I know the consensus is that AOL sucks; mod me down if you must. Considering their contribution of a stupendous project like mozilla (funding, many full time Netscape developers, hosting, existing software, robust set of tools, all donated to make the best browser free software), I hope any good ideas they come out with increases the # of their subscribers.
A blogging feature not original, or particularly timely, but there is no time like the present. This is a great idea for AOL to add great value to their free AIM service (and AOL). I'd say most people have an intrinsic need to espouse their daily lives in a public setting. Current blogging offers require, at least, a smidgen of tech-know-how to find livejournal, download a client, or whatever. With AOL, the user only needs to know what a "Journal" is and have AIM/AOL installed; I believe the service will be quite popular.
so aol has discovered the blog...bfd.
oh wait, I can think of a few reasons why this is actually cool. First, aparently a good chunk of thier users thing that aol is the internet. While it may have had that appearance in the beginning they are learning how to use the web. Not bad.
Second, it would be nice if all those folks could have a blog so they can spew whatever at whomever is listening. Again, not great but not bad.
Third, this might actually be the beginning of the end for all of those hideous personal websites that litter the web with popups, useless data, unexpected embedded midi's & audio, search engine pollution, broken links to other shitty pages filled with similar flotsam and those amateur looking boilerplate pages.
not bad.
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
With the personal value and investment in e-mail addresses dropping thanks to spam, I suppose AOL needed something that will keep subscribers from jumping ship.
I've got to wonder, however, what the EULA on this thing is going to look like.... especially if the try to pull a geocities "all your content are belong to us" clause. And what will happen someday when an popular AOL blogger decides to complain about AOL's service?