AOL, a Media Company? Get Over It!

While AOL Time Warner has tried a number of ways to fix the problems
plaguing the America Online division, it still hasn’t changed the
fundamental way it approaches its business. And that might be crippling
AOL more than any problem like accounting
irregularities
, lower ad
revenue
, flat
subscription
rates
or sagging broadband
initiatives.

For AOL management to fix the division’s problems, it first needs to
stop thinking of the company as a media business and start thinking of it as a
technology company. After all, that is what the Internet really is, right?
It’s not just a new form of media but a technological platform for
electronic communications. Yet despite this obvious fact, AOL’s
management is only now starting to address its long-neglected technology
platform.

To be fair, it might not be AOL’s fault entirely. It’s been
“new media” brainwashed to think that way by everyone from advertisers to bankers to lawyers to its own brethren on the traditional media side. Back in March
1998, I got the
opportunity to attend Daily Variety magazine’s Big Picture
conference — a show for New York’s financial community to rub elbows with
bigwig media darlings. That year was the first time AOL was featured
at the event…the first time AOL started to make a splash on the New York
media scene.

I know events like this don’t give birth to false notions, but it
certainly did serve to reinforce the pretense that AOL was a media player.
The rest is history. Under the helm of Bob Pittman,
AOL steered and outmaneuvered other media companies in mastering the World
Wide Web. And while AOL was busy solidifying plans to be the online
component of traditional media businesses, the rest of the high-tech
community went through the dot-com bust. Whether management is at
fault
or part of an environment gone awry, sooner or later there will be no one
else to
blame but AOL. AOL needs to address the technology side of its business and
rid itself of arcane proprietary software.

For example, AOL still hasn’t opened the application programming
interface for the most lucrative part of its service — the
so-called “Rainman” proprietary technology. How would that help? Just ask
Amazon, eBay and Google. Or even Microsoft.

“Amazon and Google have Web Services API,” said John Radko, chief
architect
at
Global eXchange Services, a GE company that is the largest global provider
of
electronic data interchange (EDI) services. “A fair number of
their customers are technically inclined. They created an interface and
put
it out there for people to try it out. And it proves to be beneficial.”

AOL says it helps e-commerce partners integrate the service into their
shopping cart systems. It has long argued that Rainman is proprietary for a
good reason: top dollar. Partners pay a lot to get onto that system. But
AOL’s leverage has also been affected by the changing environment too. An
AOL keyword is no longer a recipe for success and plenty of businesses
thrive without an AOL keyword.

Rainman’s technical limitations affect everything from advertising to
e-commerce. With simpler ways to integrate into the AOL service, more
partners could access AOL members, which might even help to stem the 50 percent
drop
in e-commerce revenue projected for next year. In addition,
advertising partners would have a much easier time bringing rich-media
technology onto the Rainman platform, helping to boost ad revenue.

But Rainman is only symptomatic of AOL’s entire problem. It has been very
slow
to adopt open software standards. AOL has opened up the API of its other Web properties. Its ubiquitous
MapQuest service offers its API to partners who want to add location-based
services. But while Microsoft has worked to provide developers with tools
and find development partners for its MapPoint technology, AOL is just now
evaluating software based on the open XML architecture.

And AOL is finally playing around with the idea of stand-alone software
such as with its email client. But up until now, AOL has fought attempts to support
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to manage email. This makes it much harder for newsletter publishers and email marketers because they need to create special AOL-friendly versions of everything they distribute.

Whether AOL comes around in time can’t be predicted. What is
clear is that it has lost its focus. Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt for AOL’s
management to remind itself by thinking every once in a while: Why in
the world does Time Warner own a technology company anyway?

Bob Liu is executive editor of internet.com’s News channel.

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