Ask & AOL

Los Angeles -- As kids flock to the internet for social networking, educational tools and more; safety on the web is becoming a concern for parents. Have you ever wish that you could become an invisible being in your house to watch for what your kids post on Facebook and other social media sites? Well AOL, in association with SocialShield, is launching AOL SafeSocial, a $9.99-per-month service that empower parents to monitor their kids' online activities without having to be a “friend.”

AOL has disclosed the results from a recent survey, conducted by Nielsen, about parenting and social networking. The survey discovered that over half of children do not know all of their “friends” personally.

The positive results of companies like ReputationDefender, SocialShield and Safety Web are showing that now, more than ever, parents are looking to spend money on tools to help protect their kids on the web.

AOL has recently unleashed a new product from SocialShield, a startup that provides parents with a “360 degree view of their child's social networking life”. This includes a report card of overall social networking activity and offers a web application that identifies various security risks on social networks. (more…)

San Francisco -- Jeeves may have vanished into thin air, but according to Ask.com, he is anything but forgotten. Ask.com, which has experimented with minimal success to transform itself into a search engine on par with those of Google and Microsoft, is making a shift into new direction and attempting to reinvent its search strategy around a more social experience, including an improved question-and-answer offering, rather than traditional search results.

Ask.com, the Internet search engine division of IAC/InterActive Corp., was historically an excellent portal where users could submit search queries in the form of a question, but now the company hopes to tap the knowledge of its end users to provide better answers for people who ask questions at its website, according to Tony Gentile, Ask.com's senior vice president of product management.

Ask.com is rolling out a new Q&A service that directs questions from users to members of its online community, as the firm struggles to make any impact on the search market. Ask's decision comes as firms such as Google are paying more attention to so-called “social search,” in an attempt to capture new growth areas as the traditional search ad market slows. Ask controls only slightly more than 3% of the US search market and its share is declining. (more…)

New York -- Ignoring the iPhone in favor of the “top-of-the-line smartphone platform,” AOL Inc. on Thursday unleashed a new smartphone portal, m.aol.com. Additionally, the company has just jiggled its focus on the Android operating system with the release of 2 new exclusive app for Android devices before the iPhone.

At least for AOL, Apple's iPhone is losing its charm in the smartphone market, as sales of handsets powered by Google's Android operating system skyrocket.

The smartphone portal is specifically configured to be able to deliver content on iPhone and Android browsers, providing a touch-driven interface that allows for easy browsing through articles and content, and additionally, the new portal delivers location-based content linked to local weather, movie, traffic and other updates; and an application directory. The site specifically is optimized for phones that support HTML5. There is also an app directory for users to find mobile apps, and it supports video content. (more…)

Los Angeles -- AOL, on Thursday announced that it had finally managed to jettison Bebo to Criterion Capital Partners, a private equity fund based in Los Angeles, for an undisclosed sum, after acquiring it for $850 million just two years ago.

Back in 2000, AOL's $164 billion acquisition of Time Warner is widely remembered as one of the most catastrophic deals in corporate history. By comparison, AOL's acquisition of the social networking site Bebo for $850 million two years ago was tiny. But ultimately, it proved to be as much of a fiasco.

The deal was validated this afternoon, though no details of the price were revealed.

Although the sale price was not disclosed, but it is rumored that Los Angeles-based private equity fund Criterion Capital Partners LLC of Studio City California, snapped up the site for US$10 million or less, while others quote anonymous sources describing the price as an “exceptionally uninspiring number.” This is an interesting location -- a suburb of LA nowhere near Silicon Valley. (more…)

New York -- Twelve years after pulling along the Israeli instant-messaging company ICQ for a hefty price of $400 million, AOL Inc., the Internet advertising company spun off from Time Warner Inc., yesterday announced it has agreed to sell its ICQ instant messaging service to the Russian Internet holding company Digital Sky Technologies, at a huge loss for $187.5 million.

Rumors has been spreading for months about AOL's plan to dispose of ICQ, which was established as an online messaging technology startup in 1996 by the Israeli company Mirabilis, and AOL purchased the parent company in 1998.

Despite failing to keep the glow in the United States to different companies such as MSN Messenger and AIM, ICQ continues to be the most favorite IM service in Russia and other smaller international markets.

“The acquisition of ICQ is a strategic enhancement of our business in Russia and Eastern Europe. ICQ's long-standing brand name and its sizable loyal customer base together represent a very attractive opportunity to further strengthen our position in the region,” says Yuri Milner, Chief Executive Officer of DST.

The disposal came as AOL's first-quarter profit declined by 58 percent on slumping advertising sales and agreed to sell an instant-messaging service for $187.5 million.

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Los Angeles -- The ex-Google execs running AOL are looking to make display advertising a little more Google-like, and following the tag-line -- AOL has introduced the beta version of the Advertising.com “Ad Desk,” a new campaign management platform aimed at small and mid-sized agencies and advertisers.

The Web services company formulated the platform after soliciting feedback from brand and direct response advertising agencies and marketers in recent months.

The Ad Desk service would empower display advertisers to take a more active role in their online ad campaigns. They will be able to access information (such as demographics and audience size) on AOL's various properties, and make decisions on how and when campaigns should run -- without having to go through AOL's sales force.

“Transparency and control are the main attributes of online advertising,” said Jeff Levick, EVP, AOL Advertising. “Providing clients with a greater level of personalized control over digital marketing campaigns is paramount as organizations continue to look for innovative ways to promote their brands and evaluate their ROI when planning campaigns.”

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San Francisco -- Barely two years after AOL acquired the social network site Bebo for a whopping US$850 million, the company has now decided to either sell or shut down the ailing service by the end of next month, as the company scuttles a stalled effort to capitalize on demand for online social networking, according to company spokeswoman Tricia Primrose.

In a memorandum communicated to employees on Tuesday, in which the company said it is seeking a buyer for Bebo, and mentioned that it is “evaluating strategic alternatives” for the property which it describes faces “heavy competition” from other social networking players - such as Facebook and Twitter, and would no longer funnel cash into it. (more…)

New York -- AOL's once-aspiring Platform-A network has been going through a lot of changes lately after splitting with sugar daddy Time Warner. The company, like Yahoo, taking stock of its less profitable assets has announced the sale of “Buy.at,” the affiliate marketing firm it acquired two years ago, to London-based Digital Window for an undisclosed sum.

The buyer, London-based affiliate merchant Digital Window, which owns subsidiaries including Affiliate Window, one of the UK's biggest affiliate networks, said it plans to incorporate the buy.at network with its existing affiliate business, AffiliateWindow, price comparison site ShopWindow and content customizer ContentWindow for customers in the UK, USA and Scandinavia.

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San Francisco -- Just a day after Google integrated its Gmail with a social networking feature, the newly-independent AOL Inc. unfurled a beta version of its AIM instant messaging client that connects with Facebook's Chat service. The partnership that will allow millions of AIM users to send and receive instant messages to their Facebook friends, and chat across the Web environments who also become part of AIM's “Buddy” lists.

The announcement emphasizes the growing competition between Google, the Internet's leading company, and Facebook, which recently passed AOL to rank third in Web traffic.

AOL said in a blog post it is adding its Lifestream social networking feature, launched last year empowering AIM users to aggregate updates and feeds from social networking sites including Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube and AOL's own Bebo.

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New York -- Ever since Tim Armstrong took over leadership at AOL as CEO from his earlier job managing the Mountain View company's sales department, AOL has been pretty successful in poaching former Google colleagues to help with the overhaul of the trouble plagued Internet company. The media company has poached another high-profile Google executive “David Eun,” the executive who functioned as Google's ambassador to Hollywood's television and film community, to become president of AOL Media and Studios as it seeks to forge a viable content business out of the ashes of the disastrous AOL Time Warner merger.

Beginning March 1, David Eun, the Google executive entrusted with courting and managing relationships with media companies at the search group and YouTube, will join as AOL's new president of Media and Studios division, the focal-point of the company's turnround strategy, succeeding Bill Wilson, who will leave after nine years with the company. (more…)