Comments on: Weblogs, Inc is Doing Well Under AOL

By: Andy Merrett

Andy Merrett — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 10:44:06 +0000

Official press release:

The acquisition of Weblogs was game-changing for AOL and the entire blogging community,” said Marty Moe, Senior Vice President, AOL Money & Finance, News, Sports, Weblogs and KOL. “Weblogs pioneered the development of professional blogging, and AOL accelerated its growth and leadership in branded content publishing by deeply integrating Weblogs throughout AOL’s substantial network of programming channels. In doing so, AOL transformed its publishing model and increased its relevancy and reach for advertisers, while advancing best-of-breed sites in key consumer interest areas.”

By: Jeremy Wright

Jeremy Wright — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:58:42 +0000

Then even more kudos to the bloggers, you’d definitely know for a fact more than I would :)

By: barb dybwad

barb dybwad — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:02:10 +0000

Having been a member of the Engadget team covering CES over the past few years I can tell you firsthand about the paucity of linklove from the AOL mothership during CES. In fact we were passed over many times on our original breaking coverage for linklove to later, slower coverage from Reuters et al — so the picture you’re painting still isn’t really accurate. This year there is finally some recognition with the Official Blog of CES business which is awesome and I hope the team finally gets the exposure they deserve from their own parent company this year — but it hasn’t been very rosy in the past and the example of CES you gave specifically is actually quite a counterexample.

As to current links on the homepage — as I mentioned above WalletPop and BloggingStocks do get them with more frequency than other sites on the network, but their overall traffic volume only accounts for a fraction of the overall Weblogs growth. You’ll also notice that the AOL Tech link goes to switched.com and not to Engadget and there are no persistent front page links to either Engadget or Autoblog (or Joystiq). I’m not trying to deny that there has been “some help” but I do not agree that the assessment of the *majority* of growth in the past 3 years is due to showcasing from AOL. Even the lifestyle sites that did receive the brunt of the linklove remain very small properties in comparison to the big WIN brands which is why Weblogs offloaded them to AOL channels.

By: Jeremy Wright

Jeremy Wright — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:06:25 +0000

That’s funny, cause Engadget/Autoblog and there are links on the homepage *right now* for WalletPop and BloggingStocks. AOL.com has always had links to WIN properties, particularly Engadget during CES and other major events.

Also, *all* weblogs, inc. blogs count towards those stats (look the comScore slides and I’ve just run a report to confirm this as well).

It’s not that the bloggers haven’t earned the traffic they’ve gotten, it’s just that they’ve had some help along the way :-)

By: barb dybwad

barb dybwad — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:06:39 +0000

That’s not entirely true. The 2 biggest brands — Engadget and Joystiq (and their spinoffs) — almost never see Welcome Screen or AIM Today placement and are not featured prominently within other AOL channels. Autoblog gets WS very occasionally, TUAW and Download Squad extremely rarely. The vast majority of the AOL showcasing went to the lifestyle blogs which were shunted away into other divisions and should no longer even be counting towards these stats. TVSquad, Cinematical, and the finance blogs (Blogging Stocks and WalletPop) do see some Welcome Screen love and have some AOL channel tie-ins but these sites do not account for anywhere near the majority of overall growth.

By: Jeremy Wright

Jeremy Wright — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 12:21:38 +0000

The real growth is due to AOL showcasing the content to its hundreds of millions of users. Not that the team doesn’t deserve kudos, because they do (!), but it’s not like it’s an insulated organization within AOL (like some teams) that have to do everything on their own :)