by Mathieas McNaughton
AOL had hoped the acquisition would position itself as a major player in online social networking.
http://news.tubefilter.tv/2010/07/14/the-rise-and-fall-of-bebo-the-video-network-that-could-have-been-part-1/
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Labels: Bebo, Matieas McNaughton
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AOL always was a major player in a type of "social networking". In fact one could argue that AOL was one of the earliest mega social networks. Their problem was that they did not realize it. The key to AOLs social network was their member profiles. This was a simple yet flexible searchable data base. You may remember some of the creative looks members came up with.
ReplyDeleteNow as AOL migrated from the proprietary software they used in the 90s to web friendly software they messed up this data base. In the end they tried to port it over to Bebo but that failed even worse mainly because it required an additional sign-in and had little in the way of search the way the original data base had.
How did AOL fail to become a social network in the sense we now know? Well the key was a flaw in the way they made design decisions about their product development. AOL in the 90s had a really great beta team for product testing. They did a great job of interacting with the community and many of us were pushing AOL to develop the "member profile" area because of its value in "social networking". Now while the beta team was awesome and great listeners they had no control or input in future product development. All those decisions were handled by the marketing department which had virtually no interaction with the community. Hence AOL went on to try and become Yahoo and ignored its core business (which was really an early form of social network).
For the Bebo acquisition to make sense it would have had to work well for both Bebo members and AOL members. In fact it probably worked well for neither. AOL was already at a point where it was phasing out its own in house video department and the spin off from TW was well under way. The TW merger had left AOL as a stable of internet properties and the hope was probably to cross market those properties to the Bebo community. However by this time Facebook had achieved market dominance and it was really all over for that strategy.
The moral of this story is that companies should leverage input from their beta team in product development. Had AOL done that they would still be a key player in social networking today.
Where is AOL getting this money? And Babo has to live on, it brought us KateModern.
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