14 DAY TRIAL // AOL is continuing its reshaping in anticipation of the spin-off from media giant Time Warner with a new hire at the top level. Brad Garlinghouse, a former senior vice president at Yahoo, will join AOL as the head of the Internet and Mobile Communications. The division includes some of AOL's most valued and 'historic' assets, AOL Mail and AOL Instant Messenger. The move is also meant to consolidate the East coast company's position in Silicon Valley, as Garlinghouse will also lead AOL Ventures in California.
Garlinghouse left a similar position at Yahoo last year, after several years with the company. He believes that the time is right for new ventures in the communications market, especially with newcomers like Facebook and Twitter changing the way we use and relate to online communications.
To this end, AOL will be looking to make key acquisitions or partnerships with startups in the field pursuing new opportunities. At the same time, he believes that there is still great value in the traditional forms of online communication and that social networks and other new developments won't replace them completely anytime soon.
“It’s a vibrant segment and this just means there are a lot of opportunities to enable integration,” Garlinghouse told BoomTown. “I think of it as an expansion of online communications and I hope AOL can do more collaboration and partnerships.”
AOL's email and instant-messaging services have seen a steady decline in user numbers for the past years, with the drop accentuating in the past year. AOL Mail was recently overtaken by Gmail in the US to become the number-three webmail service, and visitors have dropped from a little over 45 million, in July 2008, to just 36.4 million, this year.
“It’s really exciting to be to able to rebuild and revitalize an industry giant,” he added. “I make no bones that these [properties] are in need of that…but there is also a huge opportunity to do something cool.”