Businessweek follows up their recent WiFi coverage with this story by Brian Hindo about AOL’s lack of a turnaround strategy and its impact on the company.
Hindo points out, once again, how the unit is managing to its numbers through relentless cutting and cost-reduction, but that just isn’t enough.
Some recent conversations with people still working across the company described an environment where various groups were at one another’s throats, and it was difficult to get anything done, but this has been the tenor of AOL–and the curse of many large companies–since at least 1998. Maybe AOL just needs to keep rightsizing itself until the unit is small enough that everyone believes there is just one agenda and they deliver magnificently on it. I see that kind of attention to detail, drive, and passion for excellence in the product groups under David Gang–AOL 9.0 looks great, the AOL Journals have a wonderful UI and great ease of use, and You’ve Got Pictures has gotten much better in the past year, but I don’t see it over on the programming side, where the swirl seems to continue.