Ask & AOL

San Francisco -- AOL, which became a publicly traded, autonomous company in December after getting spun off by former parent Time Warner, on Monday said that it has acquired Nashville, Tenn.-based video firm StudioNow, a company that delivers an online platform for creating, storing, and distributing video, for $36.5 million in cash and stock, a move intended at bolstering AOL's Seed.com for the creation of original content as key to its strategy for boosting its traffic and, consequently, its so-far disappointing online advertising business.

AOL said it plans to blend in StudioNow technology to add video capabilities to its Seed.com content-management system, expanding the website's current offerings of professionally created writing and pictures. (more…)

New York -- Since its recently announced voluntary layoff program that fell short of its goal late last year, US Internet company Aol Inc., on Monday said that it will begin the process of giving out pink slips to around 1,200 to 1,400 employees and said it would close some European offices, to meet a target of trimming one-third of its global workforce.

The Internet pioneer, which was turned out from media giant Time Warner last month after a strained merger, announced in November that it planned to trim its work force by about one-third, cutting up to 2,500 positions.

The company then said that it would take a 200-million-dollar charge as part of a restructuring as it regained independence. But yesterday, Aol said that about 1,100 employees accepted a buyout package, offered in December and aimed at cutting some 2,300 jobs and that this week it would begin laying off another 1,200 more workers.

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New York -- AOL's MapQuest has finally announced the launch of “360 degree views,” to its maps today, a feature that saw the day of light almost two-and-a-half years after Google first added similar images to Google Maps Street view. Currently, it is available for 30 cities and 13 suburbs in the United States, with more to come soon.

Of course, it takes a long time to photograph major intersections across the country and add the data to and online mapping service, but in the meantime, Google has been able to take advantage of that head start, along with other unique features, to surpass MapQuest's once large lead in the mapping market, which is likely to become even more significant as smartphone adoption increases, according to HitWise.

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San Francisco -- Barely days after separating from corporate company Time Warner, AOL Inc. is negotiating to sell its ICQ instant-messaging service to Russian Internet-investment Russian firm, Digital Sky Technologies, is best known for its $200 million stake in Facebook, according to people familiar with the matter.

Quoting unnamed sources, the Wall Street Journal said that talks between AOL and the conspicuous Facebook investor are still in the early stages, and AOL has reached out to other parties as well, according to a person familiar with the talks. The sources said that AOL could fetch somewhere between $200 million and $300 million from the sale.

The move reflects one of the first major action from AOL's new chief executive, Tim Armstrong, who just guided the company through a spinoff from Time Warner. AOL bought ICQ's parent firm, Mirabilis, in 1998 for $287 million and other payments worth up to $120 million.

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Los Angeles -- AOL has renewed its logo and plans to launch the new look after it is liberated from its oppressive Time Warner overlords, as it faces a tough year ahead. But AOL is trying to emerge from this rough patch as a stronger company -- previewed its new brand identity Monday and stepped up its seemingly eternal campaign to reduce its workforce.

The company this week is demonstrating “its new brand identity for its future as an independent company devoted to creating the world's most simple and stimulating content and online experiences.”

The company is offering takeovers of about 2,500 members of its workforce as it attempts to reduce its employee headcount by nearly a third over the next few months. The once high-flying company and its nearly ubiquitous online greeting -- “You've Got Mail” -- still has several vibrant features and the company believes it will be in a better position to exploit them as a standalone operation.

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New York -- Even as the dwindling economy seems to be recuperating, but ahead of broader layoffs at AOL, the soon-to-be-independent company issued pink slips to 100 of their employees on Tuesday, in what several industry blogs are predicting it as a prelude to mass layoffs expected to occur once the company completes its spin out from parent Time Warner next month.

The slashing was first reported by Gawker Media's Valleywag blog, will be widespread across the company, according to a source close to the decision.

While today's layoffs are broadly spread across AOL's various departments, however, it is not exactly part of AOL head Tim Armstrong's comprehensive cost-cutting initiative -- code-named “Project Everest” -- which he has said is planned to look at streamlining roughly 10 individual teams at the company, and which is expected to take effect within the next month. Of AOL's roughly 6,000 employees, layoff estimates range between 1,000 and as many as 2,000.

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New York -- The Googlization of AOL's top brasses continues. AOL, the struggling Internet unit of Time Warner, on Tuesday announced the appointment of another Googler veteran… The latest is former YouTube monetization head “Shashi Seth,” who will now serve as SVP for Global Ad Products at AOL.

In his new position, Seth will be responsible for managing the company's sprawling family of advertising and monetization technologies, where he will be entrusted with building and scaling AOL's advertising platform and developing new products. He will also have global oversight of Advertising.com and the company's other display ad products. He will report to Jeff Levick, president of global advertising strategy. Levick himself is a recent recruit from Google, as is Tim Armstrong, AOL's chief executive.

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San Francisco -- Barely two months after being designated as AOL's new COO, Kimberley Partoll, as well as SVP of Search & Local head John Kannapel are quitting the company amid reorganization, as CEO Tim Armstrong is searching for ways to cut down the company's costs, according to multiple media reports.

Partoll's exiting is particularly surprising because Armstrong only named her as COO in July. According to a source familiar with the matter said the re-organization is meant to streamline management.

The move is part of a reorganization of AOL's executive entourage under the new CEO as he prepares the company to be spun off from Time Warner Inc. this year.

Partoll, who was EVP for access, business intelligence & new ventures, before being promoted in July to act as COO, was highly attributed with selecting ad agency “Leo Burnett” to revamp the AOL brand. An AOL vet, she literally just got the job as part of Armstrong's first-100-days review; in the memo announcing her promotion and a slew of other changes, Armstrong called her “an outstanding operating executive.”

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San Francisco -- AOL's instant messaging service (AIM) striving to keep pace with the growing trends does not want to be defeated by the web's latest and most popular social networking and publishing tools, so it has decided to join them -- on Tuesday announced a major update by integrating the AIM Lifestream application that lets people update, follow and reply to messages on modern social services Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Flickr, and Delicious.

“It is lighter, swifter and cleaner,” said Jeremy Rephlo, director of product manage for AIM.

Additional integration into instant messaging of AIM Lifestream will display updates from the social feeds referred above and, besides, lets people to post back to the services. The suite of products, including clients for Macintosh and iPhone apps, and a Web client, will be launched on September 22. The current Lifestream Web site shows the development of the project so far. The finished version will bring instant messages into the mix.

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New York -- AOL Inc., which is being separated from Time Warner, said it has appointed “Brad Garlinghouse,” a former Yahoo executive who was accredited with exposing the deep problems at the Internet company, as President of Internet and Mobile Communications, spearheading AOL's global efforts to expand the reach of its e-mail and instant messaging, the company announced early on Tuesday.

Garlinghouse, who was most recently served as an in-house senior advisor at venture capital firm Silver Lake Partners, will also assume an expanded role heading up AOL's Silicon Valley operations from its Mountain View, California campus.

In his new role, Garlinghouse will take on the battle to expand the reach of AOL's popular e-mail and instant-messaging services. AOL, also said Garlinghouse will serve as the company's West Coast lead for AOL Ventures, the company's unit in charge of investing in start-ups and spinning off businesses arm headed by Jon Brod. He will be stationed at AOL's offices in Mountain View, Calif., where the company's email operations are based.

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