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AOL to be Split into 4 Units

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the all-four-dedicated-to-mailing-me-crap dept.

unsupported writes "AOL is apparently dividing into four units to provide a clear direction for each. The four divisions are as follows: Audience (Advertising, and AOL IM, Moviefon, Mapquest, Netscape.com), Access (dial-up, highspeed), AOL Europe (for the foreigners), and Digital Services (Premium services, phone and music subscription). "

5 of 294 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Quick Question... by Timesprout · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The big whoop is they probably paid some management consultancy group a library of congress sized amount of money to formalize what they were already doing under the guise of a complete management reorganisation.

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  2. Restructuring means layoffs, consultants by PornMaster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Restructuring seems to be the way Boards of Directors justifies layoffs, blaming the placement of the "walls" for poor performance, rather than looking at lacking innovation, morale, and business savvy.

    Besides the already-commented-about possibility of selling off parts, in this day and age the notion of dividing up divisions of a company differently just seems to fly in the face of the path of the enlightened employer of the 21st century.

    By segmenting into distinct groups, you facilitate the blame game and hamper communication. This kind of restructuring certainly isn't what you do to revitalize.

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  3. Re:Quick Question... by dykofone · · Score: 4, Insightful
    You hit it. Large corporations go through a reogranization almost annually. I've gone through two in the past year with two different companies. The managers and high-ups make a huge deal about it (rightly so, since it's stuff like that that keeps em in a job) while everyone else just goes "yeah alright, so my division got renamed. yippee."

    I think its mostly to create some buzz amongst the investors and shareholders, who think a reorganization means increased efficiency and therefore huge profits. Plus, it allows for new banners with fancy slogans and missions statements to be hung on the wall, and to keep everyone up to date on the latest corporate slang (a reorganization is really nothing more than lots of little paradigm shifts to better utilize the synergistic capabilities of our capital-index work force, etc)

  4. Re:Quick Question... by ApolloCreed · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I don't know what the big deal is, but Microsoft always opposed being split up, yet they should follow suit.

    Microsoft opposed being forced into becoming multiple companies. AOL isn't doing that - they are just formalizing internal business units. I think this will be good for them in that it could give VP's more power make decisions independent of the other units. I'm sure Microsoft already does this. Of course, this would make it simpler to split into seperate companies in the future and make it more obvious if that were a good idea.

  5. Re:At Least a Few More Years by pen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    AOL had live video streams of the presidential debates. You could not see them anywhere on the "plain" Internet. I didn't watch the presidential debates, but I'm sure that a lot of people would like to.

    If you're into mainstream content, AOL does give you more than just the free stuff on the Internet. They have the clout to make deals with the mainstream content providers to offer this content.

    Doesn't do anything for me personally, but there's some truth to what they claim.