AOL cutbacks will affect fellow game blogs: PS3 and Xbox 360 fanboy
AOL recently announced plans to cut products across the company in order to improve its bottom line. In the past the Internet giant was able to leverage top products while saddling the stragglers with ease but that era is coming to a close.
The product cuts will mainly take place at AOL Dulles, where a significant amount of development takes place. However, Tricia Primrose Wallace, AOL spokesperson gave assurance that Dulles will continue to remain the central development hub for products.
According to the Washington Post, AOL under went several rounds of layoffs and is now restructuring its product portfolio, weeding out the low performing products. However, it doesn’t seem that it’s all gloomy news for AOL, as execs emphasized that their email product has just overtaken Microsoft’s Hotmail for the number two spot after Yahoo mail.
“There was a time at AOL when the strength of our aggregate portfolio of products more than compensated for the weakness of an underperforming product … The realities of the industry and market shifts in online advertising no longer make that possible. Simply put, every product makes a direct impact on our bottom line.”
One bit of news that especially caught my attention was the indication AOL owned blogs maybe the next to start getting the axe. AOL’s subsidiary Weblogs, Inc. houses about 90 blogs from Engadget to gaming blog sites PS3fanboy and Xbox360fanboy.
Apparently AOL will send the directive down to the blog sites to reduce their posting, which is pretty sad news especially for video game and tech fans. This pressure was applied to AOL by its parent company Time Warner, with talks of spinning off AOL.
Weblogs, Inc. cranks out a good portion of the game and tech related news and its gradual slowdown will be noticeable to those that frequent those sites.
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