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AOL Dumps $1.2 Billion Worth of Acquisitions
destinyland writes "The social networking site Bebo is being sold for just 'a small fraction of the $850 million AOL paid for the site two years ago,' according to the Wall Street Journal. Since its acquisition, 'the site has been shedding users as fast as Facebook and Twitter have been gaining them,' according to one industry observer, quoting an April memo reportedly sent by an AOL executive arguing that Bebo 'has been declining and, as a result, would require significant investment in order to compete in the competitive social networking space.' Bebo's traffic is already down 44% from last year, according to the Wall Street Journal, attracting just 5 million unique US visitors in May (versus 130.4 million for Facebook). And earlier this month, AOL shed the instant messaging service ICQ for $187.5 million — which it had acquired in 1998 for over $408 million."
Web trends come and go. Much of the time, it is just a roll of the dice on the company's part as to which "trendy" startup they decide to buy. Hell, perhaps "Facebook" was just easier to say/read/pronounce for todays high-school drones, so it became popular. Or perhaps it was i'ts (once) simplistic interface and (semi) useful purpose. Or perhaps the flying spaghetti-monster decided to cut the strings. Either way, nothing new under the sun, and the lesson to be learned from here is that if you gamble on fluctuating trends and fads, there is always an inherent risk to be understood.
And plus, if your company spams the world with digital coasters for a decade, well, your really screwed.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
AOL just shouldn't be allowed to acquire anything from now on. They seem to ruin everything they touch.
I think it's worse than that. Once a company gets associated with AOL, it's reputation goes into the swirling porcelain bowl. If they acquires the companies but didn't tell anybody, they would be far better off. Even my elderly mom and dad know that AOL is intrinsically lame.
Brett
Someone make an excellent point about making sure that a web site stays relevant (using API's, observing the competition and keeping up with features). If you ignore what your competition is doing and think a site is good as is, you as owner of that domain are going to get trampled by any and all competition.
However, I do not agree that facebook and twitter are 'just a fad'. Facebook is top dawg because of every reason. Fast loading, simple interface (no messy myspace background and image personalization), a great domain name. Twitter, same thing as facebook. Great domain name, simple to use and uniform formating, limiting personalization. Most people are not good website designers!
jobs was the money man, woz was the geek.
THL phish sticks
Not only that. AOL seems very US centric, the acquisitions they make (most striking example being ICQ) just seem to "stop existing" internationally.
ICQ was quite popular among the people I know (in Sweden), but since AOL bought them I've only ever heard of them in the context of being considered for sale or now being sold. The service works internationally for sure, but the little marketing I've seen for Live Messenger totally crushes anything I've heard about ICQ for years. In the context of the Internet, no news isn't good news. No news is abandonware.
Impressive. You've just mentioned the three biggest assholes in the entire industry, and called them geeks because you want to be on the winning side.
Why don't you add Larry Ellison to your list there.
Woz wanted to make products he would use, Jobs makes products the general public can use.
Remember they bought Netscape for 4 BILLION! Then they did nothing with it ... nothing! They could have rebuilt AOL to work in the Netscape browser. The way all of Google works today. Overnight Netscape would have gained 40% market share. Even just the Netscape homepage could have brought in some money.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
They DO know that you're supposed to buy LOW and sell HIGH right? The consistency with which they're doing the opposite makes me wonder. I mean, even a blind squirrel gets a nut every once in a while, right? You would think that they would accidentally buy one good company. Maybe they have some sort of Midas poo touch, where everything they touch turns to poo. Actually this IS AOL we're talking about here, so maybe that's what the problem is...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This actually kind of surprises me... From what I understand, ICQ is still a big player internationally in the instant-messaging space. Unless Skype is suddenly ruling the roost or something... And despite my qualms with some of their updates over the years (Newsflash: When you have to put out a "Lite" version of your software because your users refuse to use the bloated piece of crapware that your official client is, you're doing something wrong...) ICQ has done nothing if not tried to remain relevant, added features, tried to integrate with other systems.
ICQ seems like one of the pieces of tech to keep... and not just for nostalgia reasons.
ICQ #5632973
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
What about Computer Associates, you insensitive clod? Their track record dwarfs AOL's
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
Seems like AOL's business plan lately is throw what ever they can against the wall and see what sticks.
Well AOL had their business model yanked out from under them with the arrival of the internet. After that they became a "media company" by swallowing other "media companies", but the rudder fell off of that ship a long time ago.
I guess we can just be lucky that they didn't decide to buy politicians and try to force through legislation that outlawed broadband and forced everyone to use their software on their network... MAFIAA-style. Perhaps in a parallel universe.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It's fair to say that being a colossal asshole correlates with business success far more than being a geek does.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it