The stock market values the America Online part of AOL Time Warner at approximately zero, as far as I can tell. Steve Case, who’s quitting as chairman (Washington Post), should have been able to depart with the online operation that he built.
Of course that wasn’t going to happen. But there’s been so much illogic in this saga that one more bizarre event wouldn’t have surprised anyone.
I tend to agree with Doc Searls that AOL is toast, but I qualify this feeling by saying the online arm could save itself. How? By splitting off from Time Warner and returning to what it does best.
AOL is still the easiest-to-use service around, but its progress has lagged. And the brain-dead idea to pull Time Warner content AOL’s walled garden for online viewing was the best evidence of a flailing company’s reach for some internal convergence.
There’s been speculation, apparently informed, that AOL is planning to introduce some kind of blogging capability. This makes eminent sense. AOL grew in part because of its chat rooms — user content, in other words — and blogging fits right into that arena. Too little, too late?
I’m not ready to write off Steve Case. But AOL is looking pretty bad.