Following the departure of Kevin Conroy from AOL, the product group is being reorganized. Ted Cahall is being named the new president of the product group. Cahall will be in charge of Mail, Truveo, Mobile, Toolbar, Safety & Security, Parental Controls, the AOL Client, Search, MapQuest, Global Publishing Technology and Relegence. This is a step up for Cahall, who previously was EVP of Platforms and Technologies (which included revenue-producing business units such as search, MapQuest, the commerce and marketplace channels, and Relegence as well as publishing technology to other divisions). He is now combining his previous responsibilities with oversight of the product group.
Some other shuffling is also going on. AOL Video, AOL Radio, Winamp and other properties are now under Bill Wilson’s programming group, and Userplane is now under Joanna Shields’ People Networks unit (Bebo). This reorg was a long time coming.
Below is the memo from AOL CEO Randy Falco to employees.
From: Randy Falco
To: Intl Employees; US Employees
Sent: Thursday, January 8, 2009 11:18:13 AM
Subject: Organizational AnnouncementDear AOL colleague,
I’m pleased to announce that Ted Cahall has agreed to take on an expanded role as President of Products & Technologies, assuming responsibilities for several key AOL products. Ted will also serve in a new leadership role on the Dulles campus as General Manager of AOL Dulles.
As head of Products & Technologies, Ted will oversee Mail, Truveo, Mobile, Toolbar, Safety & Security and Parental Controls as well as the AOL Client. He will continue to manage the Technologies division as well as Search, MapQuest, Global Publishing Technology and Relegence. Ted has proven to be an astute business executive, a talented leader and an outstanding technologist (he’s the inventor of DynaPub, which revolutionized how we publish to the Web), and I’m confident he’ll continue to drive innovation and growth for these important AOL products.
As GM of AOL Dulles, Ted will serve as the on-site executive leader of the campus, a role top executives play at our other major hub locations. This is both a reflection of Ted’s leadership skills and his strong presence in Dulles, as well as the vital role Dulles continues to play in the success of AOL.
At the same time, we’re taking the opportunity to more closely align other aspects of our business with our Web strategy. AOL Video, AOL Radio, Winamp, SHOUTcast, Marketing, Registration, Affinity and Widgets will move under Bill Wilson in the Programming group, as will AOL’s commerce and marketplace channels, which had been part of Ted’s organization. Ted did an outstanding job of rebuilding our commerce and marketplace channels, making them more useful, more engaging, more profitable and driving up their comScore rankings. By integrating them into Programming, we have the opportunity to build on this success.
In addition, Userplane applications will move into the People Networks business unit under Joanna Shields, adding to its suite of communications tools. We’re continuing to work through any remaining details and will communicate directly with those teams involved in the weeks ahead.
With these changes, I’m confident we’ll continue to drive innovation and growth around all our products.
In the meantime, please join me in congratulating Ted on his expanded role.
Randy
Things shaking up at AOL.
Layoffs to follow?
Quite likely I’d imagine, no doubt due in part to AOL’s share of the AOL/Time $25B write-down yesterday.
It’s about time. AOL’s product line is an absolute joke. Point me to one area where they are dominant. m$ arguably has email in numbers, yahoo is close, has search, and an active portal, google has search, mail, docs, rss and api’s.. and aol? a defunct line of products that aren’t worth a penny imo.
That tells you what kind of product guys there are at aol.
Actually, Mail from AOL ranks #2 in the US in terms of unique visitors and has been totally revamped, including an open plug-in UI for 3rd party extensions. There are over 150 domains available to chose from, so you can get a email address you really like without any random numbers tacked on the end.
Check out beta.webmail.aol.com for the latest product or http://www.tunome.com to browse through available domains and addresses.
Clearly I work for AOL, but don’t damm everything without checking it out first.
The tunome offering of domain names are an absolute joke.
alwaysgrilling.com, fanofcooking.com, likeworkingout.com, bigtimecatperson.com, etc…
With 150 crap domain names anyway you stack them you still end up with a pile of crap.
I’d rather have some random number at the end of my address or think of something else cute then having to type some ridiculously long domain name.
I guess you missed domains like @blackvoices.com @mcom.com (anyone remember netscape?) @when.com @games.com ,,, that are right on the first page of tunome.com.
@onassar: If you are as informed as you want to appear to be, then please provide the facts why you think AOL has a dysfunct line of products. I assume – in order to be able to do so – you actually used them all.
http://www.tech...tical-to-yahoo/
The ingenuity is compelling.
You don’t need to eat every meal at a restaurant to say that it’s no good.
http://www.tech...video-business/
http://www.tech...ized-startpage/
http://www.tech...ing-and-xdrive/
http://www.tech...ture-uncertain/
And those are just from TC. I think the day that AOL did a blatant copy of yahoo’s homepage. Almost pixel for pixel, was the day that it started to plummet. The only reason it has any of the market share it does is because of it’s position in the dial up industry however many years ago. It’s the same reason m$ is so big these days. Because they became established with great products, and are now desperate to play catch up.
@onassar: Just pointing to TC links gives you no credibility. TC is no bible. And all I think you did was search for “AOL” and gave those links. Did you read what was written in those links?
AOL has cool products like Mail, AIM, MQ, Search, Bebo. They have nice content sites to go with it. I like engadget, TMZ, AOL.com. I still like asylum.com
Yahoo has its niches. So does that make everything in some other company bad?
It’s time to shut AOL down. BTW, this is funny/sad/explains a lot: “In Landslide, John McCain Is The President Of AOL.com”: http://www.alle...dent-of-aol-com
Tunome/AOL wrap their hooks around you and DO NOT LET YOU GO. That’s how they pad their numbers to claim “ranks #2 in the US in terms of unique visitors”. It would be interesting to know exactly how many of the registered users actually use their addresses frequently and how many are actually dormant. I signed up for a free AOL and TUNOME to see if they were really all they claim to be. Now I want out, there IS NO WAY OUT! I don’t know any other provider that does that (and I have tried many). Closing/canceling/deleting an account if one is dissatisfied has become a feature of even a basic service. But not the “revamped” TUNOME/AOL. Think twice before registering!