AOL to sell or close Bebo

Bad news for Bebo, the social network website founded in January 2005.
Only after two years, AOL, the US base internet company, bought Bebo, and now the service has announced it plans to either sell off or close the social network.
In 2008 AOL paid £557m for Bebo, but apparently today the site can’t compete with rival services such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.
Bebo has 5.1m users in the US, a decline from 5.8m a year ago. Facebook, meanwhile, has over 200m users in the US and more than 400m users globally.
So even with their aim of reaching a teen/tween audience, and the fact they existed before Facebook, they still couldn’t compete with the market leaders.

Facebook chat comes to AOL’s AIM instant message service

Quite a surprise from Facebook but it’s letting outsiders tap into its chat service. AOL instant messenger is one of them. AIM uses Facebook Connect to integrate with Facebook IM, too.

To get started with that new feature all you have to do is log in to your AIM account whether you use windows or mac os, then you log into Facebook using Facebook connect. When you first load up the beta, you’ll see an option just above your contacts to connect with Facebook.
As soon as you do that all of your Facebook friends will appear in your AIM contact list. You can now chat with them just like you can with your AIM buddies.

Facebook Chat will now work with AIM and iChat instant messaging clients, handy no?

Aol launches an Expert Site called OWL

AOL presents their new site Owl as “a living, breathing library where useful knowledge, opinions and images are posted from experts from all over the world”.
However Owl seems more of a testbed for SEED than anything else.
If you’re not familiar with it, SEED is AOL’s open content submission platform where content creators with expertise and knowledge to share can submit content, get published on AOL’s network of websites, and get paid for contributions.
Owl is a place for expertise to live too. Whether you’re a professional or just looking to share what you know with others, your passions now have a place to be published and accessed by everyone. Simply submit your content and your knowledge will be shared with the world. And if your article gets approved, you’ll be paid for your contribution too.

The aim of these new sites is for AOL to create as much content as possible on current topics through their huge network and beat similar sites such as “Helium” or “About.com”… So if you fancy yourself as the teacher type or just want to share your passion, head over to OWL.com .

AOL’s public identity crisis

Yesterday saw AOL preview the static images of their new brand identity. Images such as the “rock hand” right through to a green squiggle, provided the backdrop to the plain text logo of “Aol.” with the idea being that these images represent the ever-changing content of AOL.

Today AOL showcases it’s video, which is another bunch of eclectic images thrown together with some non-descript pop music added to the mix.

But does this collection of images really build a strong, confident brand image? Or does it just look like a rushed attempt at rebranding a company desperately trying to find it’s place in the fast-paced digital space?

I hate to say it, but America’s already Online……….does it really need AOL still?