Valleywag

Posts Tagged “

AOL

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5 rules for making a company video worth watching

Austin-based interactive ad agency Tocquigny embarrassed itself with a video meant to show prospective interns how fun it is to work at the company over the summer. Instead of showing how quirky and Internet-savvy Tocquigny was, it proved to be a turnoff — and a ripoff. Besides not copying someone else's work, what could Tocquigny have done differently? Using five examples the agency should have followed, we'll explain how to do a self-promotional corporate video right: More »

Feature

2:00 PM on Fri Sep 5 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
2,902 views, 8 comments

Latest by Nicholas Carlson: @deathbychichi: It's true, if you can plan like Hitchcock, you don't have to edit like Herzog. more »

Terms of Disservice

The 5 most laughable terms of service on the Net

Nobody reads terms of service agreements, those legal documents new users have to click a box to say they've read. And the truth is, they hardly matter to anybody but the cyber-rights-now crowd who get worked up by articles on Boing Boing, and the paranoid lawyers at large Web companies who want to avoid money-fishing lawsuits. But sometimes they go far beyond protecting corporate interests into la-la land. Did you know that when you download Google's new Chrome browser, you agree that any "content" you "submit, post or display" using the service — whether you own its copyright or not — gives Google a "perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute" it? Google's ambitions for Chrome are even larger than we thought; by the letter of this license, Google will own all information that flows through its browser. But Chrome's terms of service are just the latest in a long line of ludicrous legalese. More »

Feature

11:20 AM on Wed Sep 3 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
35,005 views, 27 comments

Latest by Nicholas Carlson: @Barce: Great idea! Email me with an obvious clauses that should be on the list? more »

acquisitions

Turns out FriendFeed has clones and that AOL acquired one

The deal isn't finalized yet, but AOL will acquire Colorado-based startup SocialThing, News.com reports. Best known for a raging party it threw at this year's South By Southwest conference, SocialThing also aggregates an Internet user's feeds and activity from sites like Flickr and Twitter. If that sounds familiar, its because you've subjected yourself to the ramblings of people like Jason Calacanis, Michael Arrington or Robert Scoble who use a similar service called FriendFeed and talk about it a lot. They talk about it a lot because they think its really popular, but the truth is that FriendFeed suggests them as new friends to every user who joins the site. A thought: Wouldn't it be funny if AOL bought SocialThing because AOL dealmakers read too much Scoble, Arrington and Calacanis and so they think FriendFeed is the new, new thing and rushed out to by its closest competitor? Don't put it past the bunch that paid $850 million for Bebo.

7:20 AM on Fri Aug 15 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
234 views, Comment

commenter of the day

Tnuc

What's a clever way AOL can avoid datacenter layoffs? Today's featured commenter, Tnuc, has the plan: More »

4:40 PM on Thu Aug 14 2008
By Alaska Miller
757 views, 3 comments

Michael Dolan

AOL phisher gets 7-year maximum jail sentence

He's only 24 years old, but Michael Dolan of West Haven, Conn. has been slapped with the maximum sentence after pleading guilty to fraud and aggravated identity theft. Dolan and five accomplices spammed AOL users for four years with messages such as, "Due to a central server meltdown, your credit card information was lost." The prosecution claimed the scams had taken in at least $400,000 from 250 users who fell for it. Dolan's defense lawyer had argued that Dolan suffered mental illness, made worse by his father's suicide.

3:40 PM on Thu Aug 14 2008
By Paul Boutin
443 views, 2 comments

Latest by macbeach: Is there any evidence of genius? Getting AOL users is as simple as having several contacts that use more »

rumormonger

Layoffs coming in AOL's datacenters?

On August 20, big layoffs are expected in AOL's technology operations. AOL CEO Randy Falco's vision for the Time Warner-owned Internet company: Get rid of all that messy Internet stuff. Madison Avenue, let's do lunch! Stripping AOL down to an ad-sales operation (and a collection of Web properties on which to place ads) requires shedding some of the things AOL was best known for — like hosting large-scale websites. After AOL bought Weblogs Inc., gadget blog Engadget handled Macworld-keynote traffic like a champ. Alas, the server farms are soon to be put out to pasture, if a tipster is correct. Commenter aoltech1 writes: More »

10:40 AM on Thu Aug 14 2008
By Owen Thomas
3,772 views, 8 comments

Latest by N/A: Anyone there planning on posting an update, or a retraction to this story? The 20th came and went with no one more »

time warner

Liberty Media: We'd take AOL's access business

During a conference call to reports Liberty Media's second-quarter earnings, CEO John Malone told analysts the company was open to exchanging its stake in Time Warner for AOL's online access business. Liberty owns 103 million Time Warner shares, or about 2.8 percent of the company. Such a swap would value AOL's access business at around $1.6 billion, lower than the $2 billion to $3 billion analysts say its worth. A swap would lower Time Warner's tax burden, however, possibly making the deal more attractive. Earlier this year, Liberty performed a similar swap with News Corp., trading its stake in the company for control over DirecTV.

7:40 AM on Tue Aug 12 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
174 views, 1 comment

Latest by WagCurious: This actually makes a lot of sense. The DirectTV receiver needs an uplink so bad it wakes up in the more »

Tech Tyrants

Ex-AOL sales chief David Colburn


David Colburn: Prepared to get biblical on your ass
Back when he ran ad sales at AOL in the late '90s, David Colburn earned himself quite the nickname. The peons called him God — you know, the guy who turns water to blood and rains locusts down from the heavens. Once, at a holiday party in December 1999, Colburn called three rabbis up on stage and told them to pray for AOL's success, promising to donate $1 million to any Jewish cause if AOL's stock hit certain levels. The rabbis agreed, startling offended partygoers. But according to author Alec Klein, who recounts the anecdote in his book Stealing Time, none of them were about to say anything. More »

7:00 AM on Tue Aug 12 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
9,698 views, 1 comment

Latest by N/A: Wow all the way back to the 90s for this one, it's great how you guys stay current. more »

online advertising

When the going gets tough, AOL makes its ads huger

AOL ad revenue grew at an old media-like pace in the second quarter, increasing just two percent. So what's Middle America's favorite Internet property to do? Get super-sized, of course. "Beginning today," a breathless flack writes us:
Platform-A is offering advertisers the opportunity to purchase a 300x600 ad unit for AOL homepages: AOL.com, the AOL client and co-branded sites. AOL is the only portal that offers advertisers this ad unit size, which is double the size of the largest ad unit – 150x300 – that advertisers typically purchase on the other portal sites.
More »

7:40 AM on Fri Aug 8 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
494 views, 5 comments

Latest by ThatKid: @Matthew_Maurice: It's called "journalist math" more »

earnings

Google's billion-dollar AOL bet takes a dive

In a statement filed with the SEC late today, Google stated that its 2005 purchase of 5 percent of AOL "may be impaired." Analyst guesstimates of AOL's value peg it at about $10 million, or half the value at which Google bought in. It's a blow to Google, but not a big one — a couple hundred million in paper value lost, to a company that takes in more then ten billion a year. The investment still met its primary goal: Cockblocking Microsoft. [AP] (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)

8:00 PM on Thu Aug 7 2008
By Paul Boutin
1,030 views, 2 comments

Latest by bigdowro: Oh my gosh is that Eric Schmidt on the photo? He looks like a very old & tired man. more »

earnings

AOL ad revenue basically flat, probably because who goes to AOL.com anymore?

Time Warner beat second-quarter earning estimates, posting revenues of $11.55 billion against Wall Street's guess of $11.45 billion. But AOL, the company's online division, which is strangely coveted for acquisition by both Yahoo and Microsoft, didn't do nearly so well, reporting a 15 percent revenue decline to $1.05 billion. A shrinking Internet-access business is mostly to blame for the drop, but execs said AOL's online-advertising division didn't help much either. It grew only 2 percent, primarily on the strength of ad sales on third-party websites. AOL's owned-and-operated websites lost revenue. In good news for shareholders, the company did not have any news to report about improper vote counting at the company's last shareholder meeting.

12:00 PM on Wed Aug 6 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
627 views, 3 comments

Latest by WillVille: @aoltech1: That sounds like a good idea, they don't deal in technology anymore, so why have technology centers.. But Question, more »

online advertising

American Apparel buys half a billion online ads a month

Skanky-chic clothing retailer American Apparel reached nearly 48.9 million unique Web surfers with 489 million display ad vews in the month of April according to ComScore, with 24 percent of those impressions being garnered on MySpace, 19 percent on Facebook, and another 12 percent on AOL's banner-laden AIM software client. The ads have stirred controversy for the prurient use of Helvetica. How's it affecting the bottom line? More »

1:00 PM on Mon Aug 4 2008
By Jackson West
3,729 views, 10 comments

Latest by Troll_2.0: Girls wanna be skanks these days. Lots of growth in the "Slut Market Niche" more »

acquisitions

Yahoo holds lead over Microsoft in bidding for hot '90s dotcom startup AOL

When it releases its second-quarter numbers Wednesday, Time Warner will also announce it's ready to dump AOL's dialup business. A combination of modem banks, CD-ROM mailers, and ruthless telemarketers which introduced America to the information superhighway in the 1990s, AOL's ISP business still has more than 8 million subscribers who pay through the nose for a quaintly overpriced service. What will be left: A collection of websites and an online-advertising business that has yet to get advertisers to pay anything even vaguely overpriced. Time Warner has flirted with Yahoo and Microsoft for years, but hasn't yet sealed a deal to get rid of AOL, the business which, on paper, acquired Time Warner at the turn of the millennium. More »

9:00 AM on Mon Aug 4 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
1,754 views, 5 comments

Latest by N/A: Please fix: "both looking ofr more heft" more »

yahoo

Time Warner screws ex-AOL CEO Jon Miller a second time

Right as former AOL CEO Jon Miller gets a glowing profile in the Los Angeles Times, his former boss strikes back at him in the most callow way possible, by blocking his appointment to the Yahoo board. Was it not enough for Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes to ignominiously sack Miller two years ago, replacing him with the hated and ineffective Randy Falco, who instantly sent AOL's recovering business into a tailspin? Of course not! The media boss is enforcing Miller's noncompete agreement, blocking him from even working at Yahoo as a director — after Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, who championed Miller's cause, had already announced he would join the board. More »

1:00 PM on Fri Aug 1 2008
By Owen Thomas
1,759 views, 12 comments

Latest by Owen Thomas: @elvenjewel: Thanks, fixed! more »

spam

Convicted "spam king" escapes from prison, kills self and family

If you ever wished that a spammer would die, die, die, congratulations — you got your wish. But we hope that hearing the fate of Eddie Davidson doesn't make you feel smugly self-satisfied. Davidson of Benet, Colo., one of several convicted "spam kings," walked away from his minimum-security prison camp and shot himself, his wife, and his 3-year-old daughter, Department of Justice officials said Thursday. Davidson's spam scheme involved sending out massive volumes of emails with manipulated headers to pretend they were from legitimate companies pushing penny stocks. More »

2:20 PM on Fri Jul 25 2008
By Alaska Miller
2,078 views, 13 comments

Latest by N/A: All of this over a couple mil? he could have pitched a book/movie/series/etc idea and gotten more than that while more »

cutbacks

AOL asks bloggers to stop blogging, cuts costly products

Perhaps readying itself for a sale to Microsoft or Yahoo, Time Warner company AOL began cutting costs yesterday. One memo, from Kevin Conroy, AOL’s EVP of Products and Marketing, told employees AOL will "sunset" products Bluestring, Xdrive and AOL Pictures. MyAOL will go into maintenance-only mode and investment in AIMWorld — we've never heard of it either — is done. In a second memo, AOL subsidiary Weblogs Inc asked its pay-per-post bloggers writing for Diylife.com, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, and DownloadSquad to stop filing until July 31. (Photo by AP/Sakuma)

8:00 AM on Fri Jul 25 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
695 views, 6 comments

Latest by WillVille: I suppose it makes sense to cut here. The Blogs/ Channels were great back when the Big Wall still reigned more »

hires

There's a bubble in the market for Jon Miller

Everyone wants a piece of beloved former AOL CEO Jon MIller, who was oh so unfairly fired, loyalists say, by Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes. First gossips suggested Miller as a fit to replace ineffectual Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang. Then, on Monday, Yang himself said Miller would fill one of Carl Icahn's new seats on the Yahoo board. Now, a source tells Kara Swisher that Miller is "one of the top outside candidates on the list" to head Microsoft's new Online Services division. Maybe everyone can stop moaning about the way Bewkes handled Miller's dismissal now?

8:00 AM on Thu Jul 24 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
604 views, 3 comments

Latest by Troll_2.0: I that pic he has a look on his face like "I have a broom up my butt, and I more »

yahoo raid

Yang paves the way for ex-AOL CEO Jon Miller to join Yahoo board

In an entirely punctuated memo posted to Yahoo's corporate blog and the SEC, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang — or his ghostwriters — declared that yesterday's agreement to give corporate raider Carl Icahn three board seats and avert a proxy fight allows Yahoo "to get back to the business at hand." But while Yahoo will soon enough be able to focus on doing what it does best — losing market share to Google and talent to startups — Yang and the board still have one more task at hand: filling out its expanded board with Icahn-approved nominees. Bet that one of the names will be fired AOL chairman and CEO Jon Miller. Though not included on Icahn's original slate of alternative directors, Yang mentioned Miller by name in his memo as a potential new board member.

8:00 AM on Tue Jul 22 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
1,051 views, 9 comments

Latest by N/A: @buzzzkilll: Why not, when we get to have a deathly unfunny attention whore like you on this board. more »

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