I’m not a big AOL fan, but it’ll be interesting to take the new products for a spin.

As much as Yahoo! has been bagged on, at least they’re not as copy-cat as AOL. Nothing sadder than what AOL has amounted to. Being someone that lives not 5 miles from AOL headquarters, it’s so disappointing that they can’t come up with something as creative as 56k modem spyware like AOL 4.0

I groaned as soon as I heard the title ‘myAOL’.

I groaned louder than a ‘born-again-grandma’ when it was also another bloody startpage. No innovation, no progression.

Why the hell do I expect more? Wonders never cease..

Sweet! Wonder how many days before myAOL cd spam containing a URL shortcut to myaol hits our mailboxes.

It just Netvibes with AOL logo…
I choose Netvibes.

AOL, do everyone a favor and kill yourself. Or change your name without anyone knowing. You’ve been great a deceiving people so far.

I have no idea what AOL is trying to install.

Well done AOL on being a year behind everyone else…

This is exactly like netvibes. Copycats!

The title got me. Having worked for 7 years at AOL, I first thought that it’d mean “products that never launched”.
So here’s something new: AOL launches products. Are these really new? One can doubt. But hey guys, just realize how difficult it is to be creative when over 50 people contribute to a project and it’s delayed by two years over time.
On some years at AOL, it’s been very usual to spend more than a third of your time on products that would never launch.
Guess why I love start-ups.

If you take time to launch your products, by the time they are unveiled they will look old and it seems to be the case here with myAol.

So steal Netvibes

- then name it a cool name like MyAOL ?

- Mike ? an ole AOL fanboy?

I got better things to do then play around on AJAX enabled stuff, crunchgear also launched a “universe” type thing as well… these things seem to only make a big problem BIGGER instead of solving the fundamental issue, we all need government subsidies to acquire 42 inch laptop and computer monitors to keep up with the glut of RSS enabled feeds!

Jon

Being product manager for a product that launches so far behind the competition must make for easy product spec writing. The one *differentiator* looks to be this, “image-driven content discovery and recommendation engine”, which is not very compelling.

I haven’t spent time speculating about the target audience for AOL, and I would guess most AOL users do not use pageflakes, netvibes, or igoogle; however, I’m sure there was/is room for something more creative and useful.

Thanks for all the feedback. I just wanted to jump in and point out that AOL had a startpage years ago, long before any of the others that were listing in the comments above so we are just going back to something we used to offer. We currently have a feed reader that myAOL will replace thus giving us to ability to offer a startpage product our users have asked for.

The new myAOL web suite will cater to both TechCrunch’ers and our mainstream users and includes more than just a slick new startpage. It also will offer a robust feed reader with integrated bookmarks and an innovative “image cloud” driven content discovery engine called Mgnet (pronounced “magnet”). I think you will find both extremely compelling.

I would love to hear additional thoughts on how we can make myAOL better once it launches. Drop me a line via the new myAOL product blog (http://myaolblog.aol.com) or shoot me an email. Let me know how we could create a better personalized product to your liking.

Frank Gruber
myAOL Product Manager

Why does everyone hate AOL so much? They don’t make products, they make the products already in existence better. The idea is not to innovate, but replicate.

Genius business strategy - why take a risk on being one step ahead - the guy one step ahead is the first to fall off the cliff. Why not always be one step behind, then see what is successful and copy it? That way you are always guaranteed success. Right? Bueller…Bueller…Bueller?

“Let me know how we could create a better personalized product to your liking.”

Because you guys can’t think of it yourselves?

“They don’t make products, they make the products already in existence better. The idea is not to innovate, but replicate.”

Certainly Microsoft showed us that the leading (bleeding?) edge is not always the best way to make money. I don’t know that the group from Redmond has ever successfully innovated. That is not an excuse for AOL’s follower strategy, but is the reality of their current audience. In classic business theory, the follower position is a short term strategy that maximizes gains so that the company can again lead by saving costs - to be invested in R&D at the next reasonable opportunity. Not sure that this is the thinking here.

There is absolutely no effing way most of us will EVER use AOL. Waaaay to evil in the early days.

Well, maybe if I get a $25 check every month. Yeah, AOL should pave the way toward paying users to use their portal….there’s a better product.

Funny how no one accuses live as being a copy-cat. No one says it about pageflakes, netvibes, yahoo… who do you think had the first “start page”? I’m no AOL fan but jeeze, folks really need give products their due based on the product, not the logo at the top of the page.

I personally like the way the new MyAOL looks. I think it offers some great tools that most people will find useful.

I did notice that there were not a lot (if any) of ads on these pages. Frank, do you expect AOL to ad banner ads here? I assume they will since their biz model has changed to embrace advertising.

In any event, good work.

Holy crap - AOL you seriously need to get a life. Who the hell uses AOL anyways? What I dont get is why do people waste so much money in creating “JUNK”. Why doesnt AOL come up with something new on their own??! Copying is one form of innovation, but if you dont improvise you’re dumb. AOL grow up! nobody needs your junk…

If the idea is to replace current feed reader and add bells and whistles to it then it is fine. Because AOL has a bad feed reader currently. very bad. example: even though TechCrunch and lots of other blogs provide full story through RSS, AOL feed reader shows only 2-3 lines on each story and provides a link to jump to the source website. This truly sucks when Netvibes, Pageflakes have such great feed readers. As for the startup page, the idea may be old but the players like netvibes brought new technology to this and made life so much simple.

“They don’t make products, they make the products already in existence better”

I think you’re thinking BASF, not AOL

oh my god. myaol… great… just 2 years late. why would anyone switch to myaol if there is igoogle, myyahoo and pageflakes who are available today and work just fine.

sorry guys but that’s really not up to speed with what’s going on. myaol… too late, to slow, no innovation. your value add?

james

Good old AOL *rollseyes*
‘We’re Sorry, the clip you are trying to play is not currently available in your area.’