AOL has been off the radar for awhile, despite multiple attempts at reinvention. Now, they will likely finally make a comeback thanks to a deal with Verizon, one of the largest mobile providers in the world. Verizon will be purchasing AOL in full for $4.4 billion.
The basis behind the deal appears to be an attempt to step into mobile content and marketing, a natural area of interest for the major mobile service and product provider.
Various sources have confirmed that Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer has been seen hanging out with Tim Armstrong of AOL. Could a possible merger between the two be on the horizon?
According to many, the two were seen spending hours in the late night at a resort bar, talking animatedly. There is a chance they were doing nothing more than getting a few drinks and letting off steam, perhaps keeping up on their connections like all good execs.
After more than 15 years since the initial release, Winamp will be discontinued by AOL on December 20, 2013. The decision might be strange for some of us since Winamp is still one of the most used music player right now worldwide.
AOL brought Nullsoft, the company that created Winamp in June 1999 for $80 million in stock and years after told everybody that Winamp is still powerful and has a lot of potential to fight even with iTunes.
Now that the news is official, the only thing that we can do is to download at least one version of Winamp, until December 20. Personally, I’ve used Winamp ever since I brought a computer, back in 1999. For me, this was simply the best ever music application ever. I don’t even kept it updated, so I run a 2010. In fact it doesn’t matter what version you run since the music is what you want to listen to.
In a world where acquisitions and investments are being made non-stop, there are some companies that have what it takes to make a step back. About.Me had announced today that it’s once again independent, after buying itself back from AOL. That’s the best happy end an unfortunate start-up would ever get. After being acquired in 2010 by AOL for tens of millions dollars, two years later the company bought itself back for a fraction of AOL’s price.
AOL purchased about.me in 2010 thinking they might compete with Facebook, Google, MySpace and other social platforms. Unfortunately, they didn’t have what it takes to do this so about.me remained just an online identity Web site where people could create a profile and link to their Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook profiles.
Michael Arrington was the founder of TechCrunch and his tech blogging hobby became a business back in the end of the year 2006. TechCrunch was still a growing force in the tech news world back then, but by 2007 Michael Arrington had taken it to new heights and even recruited an executive from Fox to run his sales team. This executive’s name was Heather Harde and she was the missing piece that TechCrunch desperately needed.
Due to Michael Arrington’s idea to put the success of his site over his own ego, Heather Harde was hired as HIS boss and she began fearlessly leading TechCrunch with a resonating calmness. No matter what troubles Heather faced she was able to efficiently lead TechCrunch through unscathed and better than ever.
There is a thin line which separates two awkwardly different worlds. When it comes to editorial independence, there are a lot of things that come in mind: stress, pressure, money. The highly reviewed and commented conflict between TechCrunch and AOL gives us the same argument once again.
About one year after the TechCrunch was acquired by AOL, their relation started to become a tough one. One year ago Michael Arrington, TechCrunch’s founder and current editor in chief, fiercely defended, even against his own collaborators’ opinions, the fact that the blog could benefit by being sold to AOL in a transaction rounding 20 million dollars. On that occasion Arrington talked about how this deal will help them solving some technical issues so they won’t have to worry about them and the TechCrunch guys could focus on writing. Well, the honeymoon didn’t lasted (as expected?) and recently Arrington announced his imminent retirement from the blog, in other words that means he could be fired from his own creation.
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