AOL was a roller coaster ride. I was lucky and privileged to be a part of it, both the ups and the downs.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
AOL, I think, represented an opportunity for a few things. One is I'm a big believer in the AOL brand, and I think AOL as a brand has touched hundreds of millions of people around the world. Reigniting that brand is a very exciting challenge and a big opportunity.
I remember when AOL was small and they were growing like mad. Consumers were coming on in droves because they made it easy to connect to the Internet. That was the single biggest innovation of AOL; when grandmas were signing up, AOL had arrived.
I have been reorganizing and restructuring AOL: changing the strategy and rebuilding it from scratch in the worst economy in a generation.
One of AOL's biggest assets is its brand. For people over 30 and, due to AOL Instant Messenger, even a lot of people under 30, AOL was their first real interaction with technology in a positive way.
Now AOL is the grandma of online Web services. I mean, we don't need it anymore.
Having spent two years at AOL, I would love to be able to go back to that industry knowing what I know, and I think I would be able to help the traditional media side to better understand what is coming at them, how to deal with it.
Put simply, my vision for AOL is to build the largest and most sophisticated global advertising network while we grow the size and engagement of our worldwide audience.
When I was at AOL, I was always on the web media side while much of the company was focused on the ISP business. We focused on big categories like celebrities and sports, and we created brands around that category like AOL Celebrities, AOL Movies and Fanhouse.
Think of any news site on the web that sells subscriptions; AOL has four times as many people as the largest subscription service. We have people who pay to use our products and services, and they are heavily engaged in our content.
We have people who pay to use our products and services, and they are heavily engaged in our content. If you erase the brand perceptions of AOL, and consider that people pay to use our properties, you would probably consider this one of the most valuable audiences on the Internet.
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