Last month AOL began releasing parts of its new tear-down-the-walls home page strategy, allowing users to view email from Yahoo and Gmail.
Today they launch the rest of the new features (we had a leaked screen shot here). Users can log into social networks (Bebo, MySpace, Facebook and AIM) to view news feeds and update status. Bookmarks can be added to the top left of the page, and a feed reader is included at the bottom of the screen. AOL is also inserting direct inks to third party news sources via Relegence, a company they acquired in 2006 and began integrating into AOL Finance in late 2007.
The new home page is being rolled out to users in stages, but you can access it here.
AOL Homepage Growing While Competitors Stagnate
AOL, the smallest of the big four portals (if you care to call Google a portal), has had significant homepage growth over the last year. Unique visitors have grown 14% to 33 million, total minutes on the site have grown 50% to 600 million, page views are up 43% to a billion, and total visits have increased 16% to 440 million (Comscore worldwide). Stats for the competitors are below. Everyone is up at least a little in unique visitors, but page views, total minutes and total visits have declined at MSN and Yahoo.
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Its good to see how company like AOL is transforming itself. I think being open is the only way of the future.
I think AOL has started seeing the possibilities of what its content and development team can do. How are they getting new users? The only challenge I see for them is getting the inbound traffic (or continued attention) that other services like Google and Yahoo get with their properties.
They would do better if they changed their name.
First the corporations tried to trap us with proprietary networks - AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve, etc
Then Microsoft created standards against the W3C that only worked on IE
Eventually the Internet will be used as was intended: For the free dissemination of information without corporate ownership or governmental restrictions.
Damn Microsoft for coming up with non-standard things that only work on IE, like y-overflow and xmlHttpRequest
AOL still sucks. I have a legacy account (that I got in 1994). You cannot setup up automatic forwarding or custom “away” messages. True, you can use Gmail (and probably others) to access AOL accounts, but the fact that they try to lock people in with their childish, greedy, and closed “we won’t let you setup automatic forwarding” policy shows AOL’s true colors. They are not open, they just want you to think they are.
What still amazes me is that people still go to AOL!
AOL has developed such nasty reputation with its hard-to-leave policies and very restrictive environment, that any computer literate would never touch it with a 10 feet pole. But then not everyone is net savvy which allows such companies to survive and even prosper.
Yeah, AOL was late to enter many markets, but i think they are now learning from their mistakes and they have some really cool properties on the internet. Being open is the future of any web services company
Have been urging a big ISP in South Asia to make a bid on AOL’s dialup service, which could be operated remotely, in part. Recent financial turmoil has put that on hold, but over the long term I believe AOL could earn more money going with an overseas buyer than under any other option.
There is still a lot of life left in AOL and will be for years to come.
A sell-off of the dial-up business could be structured to allow AOL to preserve much of the traffic that it would otherwise lose in a sale to a domestic buyer.
i will agree with Angsuman Chakraborty on still going to aol ?
so here is an idea (yahoo+ aol + twitter+digg) or (msn+aol+twitter+digg+facebook…with this say goodbye google!)
Clearly AOL has made siginificant strategic changes over the past 18 months in their approach to the open web with their portal, email and web sites.
With over 100 Million Uniques a month, I would not under-estimate what AOL has been doing and the resulting new open web audience it is building.
I love an underdog story…as some may say “they’re back”. Well done.
The new aol.com site actually is surprisingly very good. I would not have thought a portal could provide value but what they have executed has totally changed my mind. Allows me to bookmark my favs, see my multiple emails (gmail and yahoo) at once, check my friends status on myspace and facebook and also check out my RSS feeds. This is AOL? Who would have thought it. And, have to say this is the best looking portal I have seen. I even checked out the skins available
It is blatantly obvious that you work for AOL. Got it?
Do you work for a company who is a competitor for AOL ?
You’ve got rage.
After reading these effusive and totally legit comments, I am super-pumped about the future of AOL!
The new AOL.com site is very useful for the social networks and email aggregation. Any chance of getting Earthlink email and LinkedIn up there? Yes, I have email accounts everywhere, shamefully. I’d use this just for the fact it could be a single window into all of my shit.
Looks great, well done. But, it will be interesting to see if the updates keep coming. I mean, the last portal version didn’t change much for about a year. Hopefully AOL takes this momentum and starts getting “new” things out there before competitors do every month. Got to stay on your toes…stick and move. If so…game on.
What’s the point here? Why do you have to go to AOL when you can directly access Yahoo mail……..what am I missing?
The new AOL is better, but I think Yahoo’s new portal will be more revolutionary (apps, oneconnect etc).
I’ve worked in digital on/off since 99, and everyone always laughs when I give them my aol account. But here’s the problem: GMAIL SUCKS!! They’re about 10 years behind on interface design, and they trip people up all the time with the outbox/inbox confusion and set off serious diplomatic disasters with the group email problem.
I can see why their engagement #s are up - they’ve got the best content. I’ve been derailed mid-deadline by some of their news and entertainment features (”Where are they nows” and other weird blasts from the past). Yahoo doesnt come close, and their homepage is like 1998.
I agree with the person who says they have to change their name though. I’m sick of having to defend my email of choice!
@lise: AOL doesn’t just offer @aol.com or @aim.com as domains for email. You can pick from a lot more domains: http://www.tunome.com
Those email addresses work in AIM too…
I have lots of friends that work on AOL’s content side, and it’s pretty clear they’ve been rocking it, the last couple years. Is it too little, too late? Is AOL still a sinking ship? Maybe.
But at least everyone on that side of the business will be able to say that they made the right calls and produced some pretty cool products.
Unbelievable…. aol is doing something that Yahoo has not done yet! Any you wonder why aol is in the position it is in,… They NEVER INNOVATE! This is much better innovation http://www.RawHideNation.com
I am impressed that AOL is on the road back to relevancy. I hope they keep it up.
Well, change is the name of the game. Good luck AOL. I will check out the new look.
It’s sad to see a site/company that was once King Supreme stumble around like a crackhead.All that money and technology smoked up by the corporate poison. I guess Yahoo is next……..
Yahoo! is a toss up they are actually opening up a new office in Omaha, Nebraska.
Stats don’t always tell the whole story. How I read them at least these only look at AOL, MSN, Yahoo!, and Google. Some people who use myAOL, iGoogle, and My Yahoo! bypass the generic page and use the customizable ones. There are also start pages such as Netvibes and Pageflakes to consider. iGoogle, My Yahoo!, Netvibes, and Pageflakes have already taken steps similar to this through the gadgets/widgets they offer
Don’t get me wrong, AOL is one of the best for generic pages, and for a couple of months it was my start page; however, I prefer customizable pages, thus I switched it.
This is good, competition is pushing them to give us better choices.
Let look at it, it a great am talking about aol pls i have delete the message u send to me pls resend it again thank