AOL Makes a Splash
AOL may have arrived a little bit late to the User Generated Content arena, but the Entertainment company sure knows how to make an entrance. On the heels of the release of their “MySpace Killer” called AIM Pages, AOL has now released their “YouTube Killer” under the name of UnCut Video.
AIM Pages was fairly impressive. The site was clean, seems relatively easy to navigate through, and addresses some of the long-term problems that will undoubtedly plague MySpace, like building the site Web 2.0.Â? We posted yesterday about MySpace offering episodes of ‘24′Â? and how the move could take a little of the wind out ofÂ? AOL’s sails. But the very next day, AOL’s release of their own video sharing website trumps News Inc’s release.
We’ve mentioned more than once that these types of websites need to focus on providing their own unique angle that attracts users to them over the competition. We also stated that it will takeÂ? a new model to fullyÂ? capitalize on these userbases. AOL decided to make two independent sites for the two most popular niches of consumer generated content, which is probably only going to increase their chances of success. The two sites will undoubtedly connect with eachother in a variety of ways, connect with the parent site, AOL.com, and provide a plethora of opportunities to market Time Warner’sÂ? extensive collection of digital media to a large and targetable userbase.
The information that the Entertainment giant will collect from the two userbases will be almost priceless. They will be able to effectively market to every single user, tracking their tendencies for watching videos, how they share them, how they portray themselves online, and in turn use that information to capitalize on the potential of online advertising.
A lot of work will need to be done on the part of AOL to ensure that this is a successful venture. YouTube struggles for advertisers because of questionable content. MySpace does have a seemingly insurmountable lead with the over 70million users on the site and has already started to offer digital media on a pay-per-download basis. However, the depth of these releases will be the key. It is not simply about competing between #1 and #3. It is not about collecting revenue by selling downloadable videos (which they still need to look at implementing), and it’s not simply advertising. AOL now has theÂ? ability to combine the power of all three, andÂ? we have to think that theÂ? package as a whole will far exceed theÂ? sum of the parts.