AOL is losing another longtime executive, David Liu. He is the senior vice president in charge of Global Messaging, which includes AIM, ICQ, and AOL’s more recent Lifestreaming products. Liu spearheaded the transformation of AIM into a lifestreaming client that mixes private and public messages from Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere.
When CEO Tim Armstrong was looking for someone to head up AOL’s overall Internet and mobile communications, which also includes email, Liu was the strongest internal candidate. But Armstrong decided to go outside the company and hired Brad Garlinghouse, who used to be in charge of all of Yahoo’s communications products.
That, coupled with AOL’s shift towards becoming a content company, convinced Liu it was time to move on. This morning he sent out an email announcing his departure in about a month from now.
Liu is already being pulled into the startup world as an angel investor (in SimpleGeo). He’s also been talking to VC and private equity firms about joining as a partner focusing on realtime startups.
In the early part of this decade, when many people inside AOL were still fighting the open Web, Liu launched the first AOL.com portal and grew it to 50 million users. He also relaunched the AOL Toolbar.
If two wrongs make a right, AOL and MySpace should merge.
he left AOL because AOL has been attempting to become a content company for the past few decades and has miserably failed. their new strategy isnt new.
huh? AIM and AOL haven’t mattered since 1998…what did this guy do but go down with the ship?
AIM doesn’t matter? What?
Nope.
What Tim Armonstrong doesn’t get is that all of the talent that invented on so many levels left AOL in droves because they were sick and tired of working for mental ill top executives, hell bent on using AOL’s assets for their own personal agrandizement and greed. The VP and director level had extraordinary talent. One or two people remain who fit this bill at AOL. Meawhile, all of the Yahoo executives hired because Yahoo is held up as a success are particularly amusing. Why? Yahoo started to copy AOL and run content, messaging and products the way AOL did and then also the AOL employees had been telling top executives. Yahoo turned into what AOL was and then learned from that to keep improving. The era of mediocrity run amock started in 2002 with all of the best talent gone by early 2007. When AOL executives now leave what people don’t realize is that most of them started at low levels and rose up because there was no one else…so the company spiraled down further because no one with a spine was left, no innovative (both content and product) was left. What happened to AOL email is a crime. Across the company AOL employees were showing everything that came to pass with Web 2.0, social technology etc. The execs refused to listen
p.s. denny’s is hiring
That’s quite a forehead.
Perhaps the new venture involves selling snacks while customers enjoy a feature film beamed onto that colossal cranium.
it is expected after making the bad the $B bebo deal.
has he passed away? Title sounded like that.
Its a sad state when people have nothing better to do than to put up irrelevant comments that contribute no value…
“Chief Lifestreamer” LOL!
AOL IM, who uses it?