My Schmorgasboard of Schadenfreude: AOL
debragalant | April 12, 2011
There is one good kind of angst, and that is the angst that happens to someone else. Particularly a someone else that is large, corporate and deserving. For example — let’s just pull a name out of the air — AOL.
If I ran a hardware store, I’d want a special place in hell reserved for Home Depot. If I owned a bookstore, it would be Amazon. If I ran a luncheonette, it would be McDonald’s. If I just owned some generic Main Street store, it would be Walmart.
But since I run a local news site, my particular enmity is for AOL, which set itself up about a year ago to be the world’s biggest mega-marketplace of online “content” and whose Patch empire has been busy replicating the brand I created in 2004 and elbowed into my territory last year. Can I hate them just because they’re big, they have deep pockets, they’ve poached talent and they can run at an operating loss while I have to stay in the black? Sure, why not? I’m David. They’re Goliath. But I also hate their corporate soullessness: the suitification of the blogosphere, the scaling of local.
I get Google news alerts for AOL, and my day is made whenever I see the first complaint by someone complaining that AOL sucks. Which these is just about everybody but Arianna Huffington. AOL’s daily angst is my daily smile. I just can’t help myself.
These days, it’s a daily schmorgasboard of Schadenfreude: lawsuits from from HuffPo bloggers and AOL freelancers. Massive closings of popular blogs and the backlash from former staffers and fans. Then there are thought pieces like this — “Why Facebook is AOLifying the Internet — and That Sucks.” And my all-time favorite, published on AOL’s own TechCrunch blog: “Aol to Journalists: You Be the Rock Star, We’ll be the Mark Chapman.” (That’s so cool, even getting acquired for $25+ million doesn’t make TechCrunch pull its punches.) And for kicks, there’s always the Twitter search “AOL sucks.”
Yes, Tim Armstrong still has those CEO good looks, the high cheek bones and the expensive suits. He made $15.3 million last year, which is a great deal more than me. But I bet, when he falls asleep, he has nightmares in which Arianna kills his pet rabbit. At least I hope he does.
Photo: All About George via Flickr. All opinions in this post are entirely my own.
I worked for AOL for awhile back in the 90s (during the dial-up years!), and I wouldn’t be too worried about them. A big, public company will focus on something and pour money and resources into it…right up until it doesn’t. There will be a new business plan every 90 days, and the decision makers will not be personally invested in the individual brands way down the ladder. You’ll make Baristanet work with every last bit of energy you have; they’ll make Patch work until the day someone decides not to.
Well, Armstrong is quite invested in Patch — as its founder. But Arianna isn’t, nor are the shareholders. Thanks for the vote of confidence.
Unfortunately, Tim Armstrong does not have those nightmares. That is why he can keep repeating atrocities at AOL. Let’s face it — Tim and his cohorts are grabbing at the “strategy du jour” that they hope can save AOL and make them heroes. But the strategy changes so often, it’s clear that management has no idea of what its doing — and to make matters worse – management’s FLIP FLOPstrategies end up hurting AOL’s investors as well as the livelihoods of journalists — those that AOL claims are front and center.
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