AOL Vice Chairman Ted Leonsis feels "pretty good -- not great, but pretty good" about AOL's results, as reported Wednesday. He'd feel better, of course, if the street wasn't a little peeved about the too-rapid decrease in subscribers. He doesn't mention why he doesn't feel great, instead focusing on the positive, the ad revenue growth: "the businesses we get compared to most often are Yahoo! and MSN, and we grew nearly as fast as the former and nearly four times faster than the latter."
He's also wonderfully pleased with the company's decision to take the content out from behind the subscriber-only wall and offer it to everyone (along with free e-mail). "Customers like our products," he says, pointing out AOL's 107 million unique visitors, a number that's stable despite the subscriber loss.
Meanwhile, over at the Yahoo! Publisher Network blog, we finally have a response to their unceremonious boot-age of many MySpace publishers.
Willan Johnson, Vice President and General Manager of YPN, is naturally completely unhelpful and doesn't give any juicy
stuff. He doesn't even dare speak the name of MySpace (maybe in the halls of Yahoo!, it's known as
"space-who-cannot-be-named"). He says that the "account closures were based solely on traffic quality
issues" and notes that YPN "is still an invite-only beta program." Johnson concludes, "Maintaining
the quality of our Network is vital to the success of everyone involved." [Yawn] Nothing to see here but PR-speak. Moving along...
A trip through Insider Blogging wouldn't be complete without at least checking out the Scobleizer, Microsoft's self-appointed bloggity prophet. Right now, he's defending (?) his corporate overlord on the recent "pan" of the Ultra Mobile PC by The New York Times' David Pogue. (Aside: Will Ultra Mobile be the new Super Size?) Pogue says that, 30 seconds after you overcome your initial excitement at the coolness of holding the tiny thing (9" x 5.5" x 1"), "your next instinct is to try doing something on this computer — and that's when you discover that there's no keyboard, mouse or trackpad." He discovers how to workaround these issues, but in the end determines that "the Ultra Mobile PC feels so wrong. It aims to bridge the size gulf between a palmtop and a laptop, but winds up inheriting the worst aspects of each." Ouch.
In comes the Scobelizer on his white blog steed to stand up for his leige's honor! OK, no. Scoble joins in the pan, not for the utility, but for the dollar signs. Says Scoble, "I'm very bullish about UMPCs, but there's something more flawed than what David hints at: the price... These things just won't do well until they drop in price. Until they [do], we're doomed to a niche market, no matter how useful or cool they are." Scoble thinks they should be about $500.
I think they look super cool, but like Scoble and Pogue, I wouldn't buy one to use as they were intended (in fact, I wouldn't buy one at all, because, well, my income is currently all tied up in things like houses and diapers and organic yogurt). Back to the drawing board for Microsoft? Let's hope.
A trip through Insider Blogging wouldn't be complete without at least checking out the Scobleizer, Microsoft's self-appointed bloggity prophet. Right now, he's defending (?) his corporate overlord on the recent "pan" of the Ultra Mobile PC by The New York Times' David Pogue. (Aside: Will Ultra Mobile be the new Super Size?) Pogue says that, 30 seconds after you overcome your initial excitement at the coolness of holding the tiny thing (9" x 5.5" x 1"), "your next instinct is to try doing something on this computer — and that's when you discover that there's no keyboard, mouse or trackpad." He discovers how to workaround these issues, but in the end determines that "the Ultra Mobile PC feels so wrong. It aims to bridge the size gulf between a palmtop and a laptop, but winds up inheriting the worst aspects of each." Ouch.
In comes the Scobelizer on his white blog steed to stand up for his leige's honor! OK, no. Scoble joins in the pan, not for the utility, but for the dollar signs. Says Scoble, "I'm very bullish about UMPCs, but there's something more flawed than what David hints at: the price... These things just won't do well until they drop in price. Until they [do], we're doomed to a niche market, no matter how useful or cool they are." Scoble thinks they should be about $500.
I think they look super cool, but like Scoble and Pogue, I wouldn't buy one to use as they were intended (in fact, I wouldn't buy one at all, because, well, my income is currently all tied up in things like houses and diapers and organic yogurt). Back to the drawing board for Microsoft? Let's hope.
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Twitter finally reveals revenue ambition, wants to be Google -- but not yet
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-08-2006 @ 3:35PM
Howard Gallimore said...
I think it's past time for Parson's to go.
How much longer can we hold on?