Failures

Failures

by Mike Masnick


Filed Under:
content, failures

Companies:
aol, google



AOL To Nuke Users' Content On Halloween

from the bye-bye dept

theodp writes "Blaming an unquantified decline in usage, AOL has notified users it's decided the best thing to do is delete all of their blogs and files on October 31st. Want to save that precious blog of yours? AOL not-so-helpfully suggests: 'The quickest and easiest way to do this is by copying and pasting your content into a word processing document such as Microsoft Word, Notepad or even into an email and mailing it back to yourself. If you have any images we suggest you save them separately by right clicking on the image, choosing "Save Picture As" and allocate the drive on your PC where you would like to save them to.' Gee, thanks. And don't get too smug, Google users - the search giant has put its users on notice that Google Page Creator will be a thing of the past by year-end, although details of the transition have yet to be provided."

These are just a few more in a long line of attempts by big companies to enable user generated content without much of a plan. With so much attention in the space, plenty of large companies (including Yahoo and Microsoft, in addition to Google and AOL mentioned here) rushed out various tools for users, but forgot to explain to them why they might want to use them. For the most part, they just launched them and figured users would show up willingly. It turns out that, even if you're a big company, it's not so easy to get user adoption if you don't offer anything particularly special compared to what's already out there.

11 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
 

Reader Comments (rss)

(Flattened / Threaded)

  1. Oct 21st, 2008 @ 7:23pm
    by victor

    If you are currently a Page Creator user, you can continue to use Page Creator and your pages will automatically be transitioned to Google Sites later this year

    from your link to googlepages.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  2. Oct 21st, 2008 @ 8:01pm
    by Anonymous Coward

    Anyone else find it amusing, and not the least bit surprising, that there isn't a comment to be found to any of the posts on the main page of People Connection Blog?

    What's that saying..? If a door closes and no one is around, does it still make a sound? ..Or something like that... :-)

    Hahahahaha

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  3. Oct 21st, 2008 @ 8:11pm

    Almost seems illegal...

    What an absolute slap to the face of those that have invested their time in AOL's blog service. THey may not have gotten the turnout they hoped for, but I am sure there are some people that are going to lose a lot of their work in this shutdown. It shows you how little AOL actually cares about their customers. http://www.custompcmax.com

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  4. Oct 21st, 2008 @ 10:18pm

    LOL

    by Eric

    AOL proves once again what a dying piece of shit they really are. I know 2 idiots that still pay AOL $24.95 for fucking dialup! DIALUP!!!! More proof that the gene pool needs to be cleaned up. Idiots!

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  5. Oct 21st, 2008 @ 10:55pm

    How to back up and move your AOL journals...

    AOL did do their Journal users a huge disservice, and on very short notice. I helped make up for their slack here:

    http://anti-aol.livejournal.com/tag/how-to:+back+up+aol+journal

    But hurry, or your AOL content WILL be vaporized by the 31st!

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  6. Oct 22nd, 2008 @ 3:02am

    Re:

    by Theoden

    The correct phrase is:

    If a man talks in the woods and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  7. Oct 22nd, 2008 @ 6:10am

    AOL to Blogger

    by JJ

    Looks like they set up a site to move your Journal to Blogger

    http://www.peopleconnectionblog.com/2008/10/08/transferring-your-aol-journals-blog-to-blo gger-com/

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  8. Oct 22nd, 2008 @ 12:12pm

    Re: Re:

    by Anonymous Coward

    You must live in the Phoenix metro area. :-)

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  9. Oct 22nd, 2008 @ 12:14pm

    Re: AOL to Blogger

    by Anonymous Coward

    Ah, but notice that it's Google doing the good deed and NOT AOL!

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  10. Oct 22nd, 2008 @ 3:42pm

    both of 'em

    by another mike

    So AOL is clearing out the file cabinet and deleting all the files of both their remaining users. That ought to free up about a CD worth of file space, huh?

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  11. Oct 22nd, 2008 @ 6:53pm

    Re: Re:

    by Anonymous Coward

    Mr. Peakerman, is that you??

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

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