AOL Journals: Magic Smoke

Monday, November 28, 2005
4:28:00 PM EST Hi folks. Hope you had an enjoyable Thanksgiving. Here's where we stand on our open Journals issues:

* Installation of the Patch:
As previously mentioned, the tech folks tried to install a patch on Wednesday that was going to do two things: 1. Place a disclaimer under the ad banner, and 2. Fix the "can't save entries" problem once and for all.

When it was installed live to production Wednesday morning, they found a problem that hadn't appeared on either the test or beta systems; the patch was then backed out.

I am waiting on an ETA to see when we'll try to install it again, and will let you know when that happens.

* Character Set:
Despite working on the problem all weekend, the tech folks still don't have a fix in for the character set problem, which is that extended characters (basically, anything other than what shows up on your basic, American QWERTY keyboard -- stuff with accents, special symbols, etc.) displays improperly.

In biological terms, the stuff with accents looks like it's been puked up onto the screen.

As noted, the tech folks are still working the problem -- it's caused a lot of the non-U.S. journals to become basically unreadable, so this is a high-priority problem.

* Archive Dates Counts and Listings:
This is the problem of inaccurate entry counts in the monthly archive view:

Also, in the monthly archive sidebar, the wrong month's entries show up in the navigation.

Both of these problems are still being worked on -- the tech folks are looking at database mismatches as the primary suspect.

* Ad Banners:
Outside of the pending disclaimer install I mentioned above, I have nothing new on the status of the ad banners. I know that the execs are aware of your complaints and are weighing all the issues involved with the ad banner placement, but again: Everything I see says the banner ad isn't going away.

Over the weekend, it looks like there was a temporary outage over at advertising.com, which is an AOL-owned company that serves up ads all over AOL, including those on AOL Journals. This meant that there were sporadic outages (now resolved) of the banner ads on your Journals. It was a techncial problem -- we weren't toying with you.

Also over the long holiday weekend, several different news outlets carried the "You've Got Ads" story that originally ran Wednesday on WashingtonPost.com.

You know something's up when it rates its own Fark.com discussion thread.

Weblogs, Inc. CEO (and now AOL employee) Jason Calacanis has weighed in on the issue in his blog, raising a lot of different issues regarding transparency, the role of PR and corporate communications, listening to members and more.

I'm not going to address Jason's points, since I agree with nearly everything he says.

For my own part, I haven't injected a lot of my own personal feelings about the ads in doing these blog entries, mostly because win, lose or draw, I have to live with whatever happens.

(Incidentally, this has led some people to speculate that I am gaining personally from the presence of the ad banners in some way. I don't know how -- kickbacks? A performance bonus? -- suffice it to say, I do not.)

There's also been a lot of internal discussion and debate on why we did this, how we did this, what we can do to make things right, what we would do if we could, etc.

For the record, I don't like the ads, I don't get the business rationale behind them and I am personally against them. However, as they say: Talk is cheap.

I can rant and rave against the ad banners, but in my opinion, if they don't go away, that may give me a few points as an "Earnest, Authentic Blogger", but I lose several thousand points on the "You're a Big Dumb Hypocrite" side of the board.

That's it for right now; talk to you later.  Thanks -- Joe

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This entry has 37 comments: (Add your own)

• #37 Comment from taylordooleyfan 
  11/30/05 5:54 PM | Permalink

  how can you find all movies on here
• #36 Comment from luvmort 
  11/30/05 12:43 AM | Permalink

  The banner ads, whoreing my life for your paycheck, suck!
• #35 Comment from princesssaurora 
  11/29/05 11:53 PM | Permalink

  Hey Joe...you are doing your best from within the big machine...
  
  thank you...
  
  Be well,
  Dawn
  http://journals.aol.com/princesssaurora/CarpeDiem/
• #34 Comment from lurkynat 
  11/29/05 9:06 PM | Permalink

  Dear Joe,
  Hope you had one too.
  Thank you for the updates.
  I'm still hoping that archives will be easier to track one day.
  hugs,
  natalie
• #33 Comment from floralilia 
  11/29/05 4:08 PM | Permalink

  
  a fark quote:
  
  "As America Online turns more toward advertising dollars to offset the shrinking number of subscribers who pay a monthly fee, the company may be upsetting the longtime customers who have remained faithful over the years."
  
  The lesson here? The best way to save a floundering business model is to alienate your remaining consumer base.
  
  When your mass-marketing strategy for delivering 1025 free hours of AOL into the hands of every man, woman, child, orangutan and flying squirrel on the planet fails...DON'T think to update your marketing strategy. NEVER adapt. REFUSE to change -- all while the amorphous internet continually reshapes itself.
  
  Cheers to you, AOL. If the Cretaceous era taught us anything, it's that adaptation is overrated."
  
  http://beyondmediatv.com/

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