DygiScape

AOL Sunsets 3 Services: XDrive, AOL Pictures and BlueString

Jul 25, 2008 Blogging

If you’re an AOL XDrive, AOL Pictures or BlueString user, it’s time to save your content before it’s gone. The New York based company announced that it will be shutting down it’s multimedia services due to low ad revenue and low user engagement.

Haven’t we seen this before?

I often found it frustrating to see services get axed only because the company never actually managed services (or products) effectively. I can tell you that when someone at AOL gets to manage a new product or service, the person who inherits it is not based on qualifications, experience or interest to manage it.

XDrive wasn’t necessarily a bad product. It’s no surprise that XDrive was plagued by account issues from the start, but it never actually received the right amount of respect or resources to make the product work for everyone. You can generally get an idea of how well a service will blend in a business in how well it’s synergizes with other service offerings. Let me tell you, suspending AIM accounts isn’t a great way to make friends with users, especially in a service-oriented business.

AOL Pictures was always a beast, at least with regard for it’s bloated experience — but it was simple. Instead, the stakeholders in the AIM business believe a broken pictures product, AIM Photos, supersedes user experiences. (I say “broken” due to the disjointed experience when using it.) Brand loyalty and synergy fails all because whomever, wherever wanted it to be like Flickr.

BlueString – WTF?  This service is the cliche of “combine all your multimedia all in one” pushed to the max. It never made sense to users and really everyone at Dulles always asked the age old question, “Why,” when AOL had already compiled multimedia storage with XDrive.

These services definitely held their potential and had several years of opportunity ahead of them; but nonetheless, due to mismanagement and apathetic operation, these services failed. AOL neglected to leverage end-user feedback to make them engage users. Also, it helps if they stopped looking at 3-year old case studies.

My next question to people who are culling services off the tarnished brand, why is CircaVie around? Just kill it or sell it to the highest bidder (I’d wager no one would bid more than $10,000 for that Web app). It’s blind “projects” like that which cause waste and poor ad revenue; especially if the business case was derived only from a mere 30-second business pitch.

Allow me to also suggest Ficlets to be next in line for sterilization since that’s a failed business, too. Without Kevin Lawver overseeing it and living through its vision; it’s dead. Look at the screenshot below when going to http://ficlets.com/:

I believe that if AOL is really going to change and really wants to get rid of their “costly” services, they should make a clean break and then can rebrand themselves for the eighth time in four years. It’s not the brand that makes the services, nor is it the services that make the brand — it’s the consumer experiences at hand. People genuinely find value in a service which is “sticky,” that is creative/unique assets contained within it, that people can interact with easily. It also requires a certain amount of marketing to get it out. At no point have I seen any of these services hit the Welcome Screen. But I can assure you that TMZ’s coverage of Britney Spears was.

Oh, and by the way, to any former AOL Community Leaders, AOL couldn’t hold off the Department of Justice that much longer. Go ahead and sign up to claim your lost wages at http://www.aolclassaction.com/.