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12:16:00 PM EDT
Hearing Decora -- Yo La Tengo
Introducing AIM Blogs
The cat's out of the bag: AOL is announcing today the creation of AIM Blogs, powered by AOL Journals. The short story: Now anyone with an AIM account will be able to create a journal of their own.
For AOL Journalers, this means that the neighborhood is about to get a lot bigger and a lot more diverse -- and, not entirely coincidentally, that all your friends with AIM accounts will now be able to have their own blog here on AOL, with all the features of AOL Journals (the real difference is that AIM Blogs, being a free service, have an ad at the top, whereas AOL Journals, as part of your paid AOL account, are ad-free).
Want to see what an AIM Blog looks like? As it happens? I made one which you can see right here. Looks familiar, does it not.
AOL, the large corporate entity, will be making a lot of noise about AIM Blogs and AOL Journals in the near future (you may have already seen them advertised on the service today), but as with anything, word of mouth counts for a lot as well. If you know folks who have been thinking about starting a blog or a Journal, let them know about this new option -- it's one of the easiest ways to dive into the world of blogging, and if I do say so myself, the AOL Journals community is the best community of bloggers to belong to. So invite your pals to become part of it.
For those of your with brand spankin' new AIM Blogs: Welcome! We're glad to have you here.
Written by johnmscalzi Blog about this entry |
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John,
Let's say, for the sake of argument, you are correct (even though you claimed to not know anything about the planned ads in our journals, so by your arguement, you DIDN'T know the planning process). Business decisions are not made overnight. There was still lots of planning and considerations before this was done. Your basic arguement still doesn't hold water. Even if AOL didn't tell YOU its plans, they must have been in place already and they sure didnt' correct your public statement to us that we would not be subjected to the banners. My original issue that they knew and didn't tell us stands.
Virginia -
the banner ads should have remained only on AIM blogs...... not ours. judi
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Ecori, if you are privy to the business plans of AOL and are speaking from that knowledge, fine. Please provide the evidence. I don't mind being called a liar if there is actual proof I lied, because why would I want to hide the truth?
If you don't have evidence to that respect, allow me to suggest something else: AIM Blogs and AOL Journals utilized the same software and have the same features, I would suggest it wouldn't make sense, either on a business or a backend level, to create two entirely separate software systems; rather, it would make sense for AOL to chose to update the software globally and implement one set of options on one iteration and another on the other, which it did. It would not imply that a plan to incorporate banner ads into AOL Journals existed at the time. -
John, John, John, John,
Before a software product is launched, or a version upgrade of a software product is launched... long long long before that happens there are business plans put in place. First there is a proposal that is reviewed and reviewed again, then the software has to be redesigned, which starts with the production of a Requirments Document to detail the desired changes and assess the impact on all systems involved (client side and server side). This would require months of work. There has to be a marketing justification, market research (which apparently AOL is incompetent at, or has never hear of) before resources are dedicated to development of the new product. Then there is the actual time the engineers need to build the software, then there needs to be a QA process performed (which for this release, AOL apparently forgot). Marketing needed heads up time to sell the advertising slots. Then there is a roll out date, scheduled far in advance, with all the associated activities.
Don't insult us. This process of banner ads in journals was WAY WAY into the development stages on the day whey you posted that we PAYING customers would not have our journals bastardized by offensive intrusive advertising. Even if AOL didn't bother to tell you, they didn't bother to correct you either, did they?
And to say essentially ... well AOL can change its mind at any moment about anything . . . say it as it is... AOL can treat us as badly as they want whenever they want, and that we invested money and time in to our space was really just us being fools.
A lie is a lie is a lie is a lie.
Virginia
1/13/06 1:15 PM
His statements are NOT made on behalf of the company. To accuse him of lying, and to uphold that expectation of 'no ads' is rediculous. AOL executives, or rather, anyone in power, doesn't sit there all day, browse the employee's blogs and correct their statements, and No, they wont hire someone to do that. The AOL Journals team and the Advertising teams are separate, and they (obviously) had more power in the decision. Not one of the best decisions, but nonetheless a decision. Your constant ranting is not getting the ads removed. I do apologize about that.
I'm "okay" with the ads, simply because I don't care. There are other blog softwares out there. Blogspot is not the only place to go to. WordPress, MovableType, are one of the best formats in my opinion. Those require your own webserver/webhost to run it.