| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
 "Free at last!" came a cheer Thursday from Steve Case, AOL's co-founder and former chairman and CEO, via Twitter, after Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) confirmed that it will spin off AOL LLC into an independent public company."AOL not what it was a decade ago, to be sure," wrote Case in the abbreviated style inspired by Twitter's 140-character limit. "Uphill battle to return to greatness. But doable. Wish the team at AOL the very best!" Case, who stepped down as chairman of the board six years ago and left Time Warner altogether soon after, quotes Thomas Edison in explaining what doomed the merger of AOL and Time Warner: " 'Vision without execution is hallucination' -- pretty much sums up AOL/TW -- failure of leadership (myself included)." Whether AOL's current leadership has both vision and execution will soon be tested. Tim Armstrong, the former Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) sales executive and angel investor who took over as CEO of AOL last month, has promised to bring back the magic of the AOL brand. In the midst of a 100-day review of the company, Armstrong is expected to lead a major restructuring, according to Kara Swisher's BoomTown technology blog. Armstrong is set to dismantle the structure put in place by former CEO Randy Falco, which divided the company into three parts: programming (MediaGlow); People Networks, which included the Bebo social network AOL acquired last year for $850 million and the instant-messaging service AIM; and its Platform-A advertising business. The process is expected to result in a more integrated company. Armstrong also is expected to do some spinning off of his own. Perhaps borrowing a page from his experience as an angel investor, Armstrong will create a unit called AOL Ventures that may foster something of the entrepreneurial spirit that inspired Case to create the online service in the first place. As its name suggests, AOL Ventures will treat some of the properties AOL has acquired recently -- including Bebo, as well as the Truveo video search service and the Userplane social media applications developer -- as standalone startups and will seek investments in them from venture capitalists, says Swisher. These businesses potentially could be spun out or sold. Regardless of which tack he takes, investors agreed that Armstrong needs to do something dramatic to bring back the magic at AOL. The consensus at StockTwits, where traders share information and opinions on stocks over Twitter, is that AOL is dead on arrival unless it makes "some smart, aggressive moves." Howard Lindzon, the serial entrepreneur and investor who co-founded StockTwits, has this suggestion for AOL: "Buy Twitter, StockTwits, Disqus and Tubemogul and get REAL time in social media and video." Unfortunately for Lindzon, Armstrong reportedly favors partnerships, rather than acquisitions, for the new AOL. - Mary Kathleen Flynn
 Deal Video
    Community
 Elsewhere on The Deal.comDealwatch
The Deal MagazineCorporate Dealmaker
The Deal VideoCategories
Blog roll
Archives
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
©Copyright 2009, The Deal, LLC. All rights reserved. Please send all technical questions, comments or concerns to the Webmaster.
