AOL doesn’t have a chief product officer, but if it did, that person would be Brad Garlinghouse, the president of Applications and Commerce who heads up AOL’s Silicon Valley office. As has been widely reported, Garlinghouse has decided to leave AOL. This is not good news.
Garlinghouse oversees many of the best product teams at AOL, including those filled with folks from some of the startups AOL has acquired in recent years. (TechCrunch was also acquired by AOL, but we are not part of Garlinghouse’s organization). AOL still has a collection of products that are not media properties, including AIM, Mail, and newer mobile apps. But it’s not clear exactly how they fit in what is increasingly becoming a pure online media company.
Just look at the new AIM preview that came out Wednesday. It’s a lovely product, but it includes a strange news feed that features only Huffington Post Media channels (including TechCrunch, I should add). It kind of makes you feel like AIM is being used to push more pageviews instead of to solve a communication problem.
As Om Malik writes, “the company is focusing more of its resources on “media” … and less on applications.” It is not the direction Garlinghouse would take the company. And, in truth, media is becoming more app-like. Editors and engineers will need to figure out how to work together to create the most compelling media experiences.
https://twitter.com/#!/bgarlinghouse/status/133958999421886464
Erick has been discovering and working with startups his entire professional career as a technology journalist, startup event producer, and founder. Erick is President & Founding Partner at Traction Technology Partners. He is also a co-founder of TouchCast, the leading interactive video platform, and a partner at bMuse, a startup studio in New York City. He is the former Executive Producer of the DEMO conferences and former Editor-in-Chief of TechCrunch (where he helped conceive, lead and select startups for the Disrupt conferences, among other duties). Prior to TechCrunch, which he joined as Co-Editor in 2007, Erick was Editor-at-Large for Business 2.0 magazine, and a senior writer at Fortune magazine covering technology.
At TechCrunch, he oversaw the editorial content of the site, helped to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produced TCTV shows, and wrote daily for the blog. He joined TechCrunch as Co-Editor in 2007, and helped take it from a popular blog to a thriving media property. After founder Michael Arrington left in 2011, Schonfeld became Editor in Chief.
Prior to TechCrunch, he was Editor-at-Large for Business 2.0 magazine, where he wrote feature stories and ran their main blog, The Next Net. He also launched the online video series “The Disruptors” with CNN/Money and hosted regular panels and conferences of industry luminaries. Schonfeld started his career at Fortune magazine in 1993, where he was recognized with numerous journalism awards.