New York Times: All the Aggregation That’s Fit to Aggregate
Tuesday, 15 March 2011, 11:16
Bill Keller: "'Aggregation' can mean smart people sharing their reading lists, plugging one another into the bounty of the information universe. It kind of describes what I do as an editor. But too often it amounts to taking words writte…
Nieman Journalism Lab: This Week in Review: Patch’s local news play, Facebook takes location mainstream, and the undead web
Friday, 20 August 2010, 16:18
"Patch determines what communities to enter by using a 59-variable algorithm that takes into account factors like income, voter turnout, and local school rankings."
The next web: AOL plans to dominate hyperlocal news – can indie journos compete?
Thursday, 18 February 2010, 23:08
"As major media companies colonize [the hyperlocal] space, do small independent publishers have a chance of competing?"
Editor & Publisher: More Readers Skimming Google Headlines Than Going Directly to Newspaper Web Sites?
Wednesday, 20 January 2010, 15:46
"The 'News Users 2009' study conducted by Outsell Research affiliate analyst Ken Doctor found that 19% of people accessed Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL News for news in 2009, up from 10% in 2006. For newspapers, 19% of those polled went there first, a drop from 23% in 2006. … Fully 44% of those polled said they scan headlines on Google 'without accessing the newspaper sites,' the report said."
bit.ly blog: Announcing bit.ly Pro
Tuesday, 15 December 2009, 13:08
"The Pro service provides custom short URLs powered by bit.ly. Publishers and bloggers will be able to use their own short domain names to point to pages on their sites. … Users and publishers benefit from the additional transparency that this private-label service provides. When you see a short URL like nyti.ms, you know the destination web site before clicking on the link. "
BuzzMachine: Content farms v. curating farmers
Tuesday, 15 December 2009, 01:07
Jeff Jarvis: "I think we may see search fall as the sole or even key means of discovery and filtering of quality content. I see three rings of discovery today: search (Google); algorithms (see: Google News, Daylife); and humans (see: Twitter). Note again that Bit.ly alone causes as many clicks a month—one billion—as Google News. Human power rises again. That’s what Fred Wilson says today when he argues that social beats search, because 'it’s a lot harder to spam yourself into a social graph.'"
ReadWriteWeb: Content Farms: Why Media, Blogs & Google Should Be Worried
Sunday, 13 December 2009, 23:02
"The bottom line is that the quality of content produced by these 'content farms' is dubious, which has an impact on both publishers and readers."
WSJ.com: AOL Readies New Media-Production System
Monday, 30 November 2009, 10:57
"In December, when it becomes a stand-alone company, AOL will begin to tap a new digital-newsroom system that uses a series of algorithms to predict the types of stories, videos and photos that will be most popular with consumers and marketers."
Alastair Campbell: A lifetime’s ambition fulfilled
Saturday, 8 August 2009, 16:21
Alastair Campbell: "I have … signed up to write a weekly column on Burnley for the new AOL website http://football.fanhouse.co.uk."
Techcrunch: AOL Newsroom Now Has (Wow) 1,500 Writers
Thursday, 30 July 2009, 08:02
"AOL now has 1,500 people writing content across its scores of content sub-brands, we’ve confirmed. … That’s more than double the number that they had creating content a year ago, and by this time next year, we’ve heard, the plan is to have 2-3x as many people as they do now. Where is AOL hiring these journalists? From the failing print world. …"
FT: AOL sets sights on content-led domination
Monday, 20 July 2009, 07:01
"AOL will on Friday unveil the early stages of a plan to become the internet’s largest provider of original content within two years. … Combined, traffic to AOL-owned MediaGlow, which houses all its content sites, rose 5 per cent in June from a year ago to 75.4m, according to comScore, and 22 of its sites ranked in the top five in their categories."
paidContent: TMZ Brings Ad Sales In-House With Telepictures; Future After AOL Spinoff Under Spotlight
Thursday, 16 July 2009, 07:47
"TMZ.com has been profitable since it launched, but remains to be seen how it looks this year and next, especially if it goes completely independent of AOL. No one would confirm the revenues, but they are likely in the $15 million range."
Techcrunch: AOL’s PoliticsDaily Quickly Surpasses Rival Politico, MediaGlow Sites Continue To Grow
Thursday, 2 July 2009, 22:27
"AOL’s new political news and blog site, PoliticsDaily.com has surpassed rival Politico.com in unique visits in May, after being launched only a month and a half ago."
Advertising Age: AOL Cracks Web Publishing — Sans Time Warner
Tuesday, 30 June 2009, 11:27
"The model goes something like this: Find a vertical with an audience attractive to advertisers, brand it (Daily Finance, Asylum, Lemondrop, Politics Daily), hire five to seven people to run it and plug in AOL's traffic fire hose. Repeat. They're the antithesis of the kind of quality standards Time Inc. and Condé Nast tout, relying largely on aggregation, blogging and traffic-goosing tricks such as provocative slide shows. But unlike the print publications trying to port their cost structure to the web, these publications can be cash-positive from the start."
