Yesterday, BoomTown wrote about AOL’s efforts–including hiring investment bankers–to sell its ICQ instant-messaging unit.
But that’s probably not going to be the end of the shedding of assets at the online site.
In fact, according to sources inside and outside AOL, one of the next candidates for sale could be its MapQuest online map service.
AOL has hired a pair of New York investment bankers, Morgan Stanley and Allen & Co., to manage the sale of its ICQ instant-messaging unit.
Sources familiar with the situation said interest in buying the asset from two major non-U.S. companies prompted execs at the online service to put a process in place for a deal that will likely occur after AOL becomes an independent company in December.
AOL bought ICQ in 1998 for about $400 million–$287 million outright and $125 million in earnouts for the team.
Sources said AOL to looking to recoup $300 million.
Former Bebo CEO Joanna Shields and Shine Group Chairman and CEO Elisabeth Murdoch have formed a content start-up to produce across media platforms, both online and offline, with a focus on social engagement, according to sources.
The new venture, which does not have a name, is being financially backed by both Shine and Shields.
Based in London, it will invest, develop and partner to create a variety of content offerings that also incorporate interactive and social networking elements.
Longtime Yahoo exec Brad Garlinghouse’s appointment to a new job at AOL today is yet another sign of an interesting trend for those keeping score of the comings and goings of top Internet execs.
As anyone who watches the digital space knows by now, this kind of management musical chairs is common and never-ending, although it seems more frantic than ever of late.
In fact, borrowing a quote by IAC/InterActiveCorp chairman and CEO Barry Diller from an onstage interview I did with him at the sixth D: All Things Digital conference, and switching out Hollywood for Silicon Valley: “[It] is a community that’s so inbred, it’s a wonder the children have any teeth.”
Yahoo exec Brad Garlinghouse–famous for his controversial “Peanut Butter Manifesto,” which correctly chided the Internet giant for becoming so lugubrious several years ago–is taking a job at AOL very similar to the one he left at Yahoo last year.
Garlinghouse, who will remain on the West Coast, will be named president of Internet and mobile communications at AOL, putting him in charge of the New York-based Time Warner online unit’s powerful email and instant-messaging properties, including ICQ and AIM.
He will also be, said AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, its “CEO of Silicon Valley for us.”
Yahoo is closer to naming a new international head, according to sources, the last big slot left in the top management structure of CEO Carol Bartz.
While BoomTown is endeavoring to get the name of this international man of mystery, the suspect list is long, since Yahoo’s headhunter for the job–Heidrick & Struggles–has pretty much talked to the gamut of international Web muckety-mucks since the search started six months ago.
In a memo to Yahoo staff after her reorganization in February, Bartz said that “international growth is critical for Yahoo!, which has become too reliant on its U.S. business over the years.”
What’s next for AOL?
Reviving the “You’ve Got Mail!” motto?
Or: “The Future. Now Available.”–set to music from “The Jetsons”?
What about: “So easy to use, no wonder it’s #1!”
Or maybe, it should just use a nice loooooooong busy signal as its calling card again?
Well, it could happen, now that new CEO Tim Armstrong has fallen prey to the siren call of the AOL brand name, after years of seeing the company wander in the anything-but-the-AOL wilderness.
Thus, he’s decided to try to welcome the prodigal brand back home, even as he prepares to spin it off in November from Time Warner.
Uh-oh.
It did not start out too well for AOL CEO and Chairman Tim Armstrong, with a poll on the screen showing most of the attendees in the ballroom at Fortune Brainstorm Tech voting that the Time Warner online unit was either out of juice or irrelevant.
Armstrong did not break any news in the interview with Fortune’s lively interviewer, David Kirkpatrick, relying more on projecting an I’m-in-charge-here attitude and saying confident things like “a challenge is also an opportunity.”
In general, Armstrong tried to be upbeat about the prospects for AOL, which has for too long been the Web’s sad sack of an Internet company.
In yet another appointment of an exec close to AOL Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong, Patch Media CEO Jon Brod has taken over the new venture arm of the Time Warner online unit.
He ran Patch for Armstrong and was president and COO of Polar Capital Group, Armstrong’s private investment company, which is focused on the media, technology and sports sectors.
Now Brod will helm AOL Ventures, a new unit of AOL that Armstrong created as part of a larger new strategy to invest in new things, and he will manage a portfolio of some of its more difficult recent acquisitions.
It’s not often these days that you get any kind of public offering in the market for tech companies–so a lot of people in Silicon Valley and elsewhere are looking at the fall spinoff of AOL very carefully.
That’s because, even though AOL is widely considered to be an also-ran by Silicon Valley, many are very interested in serving on its 10-12 member board.
Thus, AOL, with Time Warner’s top execs’ involvement, sources said, has compiled a list of about 70 possible candidates–picked, suggested and self-nominated–and is now proceeding to vet them and begin the process of asking people to serve.
Adding the final leg of its new strategy to reinvigorate AOL, the Time Warner online unit said it was buying two small local start-ups, Patch Media and Going.
Each acquisition–which focus on hyperlocal community news (Patch) and events (Going)–is small, about $10 million.
Ironically, local has previously been a big arena for AOL, which launched its Digital City unit with great fanfare more than a decade ago. AOL still runs Digital City, as well as its CityGuide listing offering.
But, in a move that will surely be scrutinized, Patch is a company whose principal investor has been AOL’s new CEO Tim Armstrong. AOL declined to say how much he had invested in the company, but sources said it was less than $5 million.
After officially announcing that AOL was going to be spun off yesterday, Tim Armstrong, the CEO of the Time Warner online unit, held an all-hands meeting for employees today.
BoomTown reported the details of the new structure of AOL yesterday, which the former Google advertising exec discussed at the gathering.
Here is a quick synopsis of the meeting, which included a focus on content, advertising and making AOL’s acquisitions work better via a new ventures unit.
Also, a dash of Googleyness.
While there were reports that the Time Warner board was meeting today to approve the spin-off of its AOL online unit, it actually gave the move an “enthusiastic endorsement” last night, according to sources.
Time Warner just put out the press release about the move that would make AOL an “independent, publicly traded company.”
But, several sources with knowledge of the situation said AOL CEO and Chairman Tim Armstrong is set to make massive changes to the structure of AOL, sweeping aside its current set-up almost completely.
That includes keeping the access business, which many thought would be sold off and putting many of the companies it has recently acquired–including its pricey Bebo social networking site–in a separate ventures unit, which will try to attract outside investment.
According to an internal memo obtained by BoomTown, Joanna Shields, who came to AOL via its troubled acquisition of the Bebo social-networking site, will be returning to London to spend more time with her family and to “pursue entrepreneurial interests.”
Until recently, People Networks has been the third leg of the Time Warner-owned online site’s businesses, which also include advertising and content.
But under new CEO Tim Armstrong, who was one of the top sales execs at Google, AOL is largely abandoning its business-unit approach for a more functional and centralized structure.
AOL–which recently has been putting its Socialthing lifestreaming service on a large number of AOL-run Web sites, moving it beyond its Bebo social network–will announce this morning that it will also be launched on another Time Warner property.
According to a press release, Socialthing will also now be part of the Web sites of the Warner Bros. Television Group.
But, more significantly, sources said, AOL’s People Networks has new versions of its AIM and ICQ messengering clients ready that it is preparing to launch soon with new more robust and socialized features.
Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference. Read more »
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