AOL's New Homepage Is Now Live

AOL's homepage redesign is already rolling out and may be live for most people already now, instead of on Monday as was previously rumored. As expected, the new layout focuses more on content, but customization and localization are big parts of the equation as well.

One thing to notice is that the new homepage features a three column layout rather than two columns as before. Individual stories are given more weight and there's more of everything.

There is also an emphasis on local news which get their own dedicated section. AOL has been very focused on local content, the Patch acquisition of last year being aimed at precisely this, covering very small markets with local news and stories.

Also new is the addition of the AOL Lifestream which aggregates status updates, posts, tweets and so on from a variety of sites and social networks.

Very similar to Yahoo Updates, the Lifestream aims to bring all the news and content from your friends in one place. If you log into your AOL account, provided you've linked it to your other accounts around the web, you'll see all the updates from your friends.

The main strategy at AOL has been content creation and curation. The company wants to provide its users will all the news and information they need, on the AOL homepage, customized for each one.

"We are going to be the company that does the hard work to deliver highly curated experiences for the consumer so that people don’t have to spend the time and energy doing it themselves," AOL CEO, Tim Armstrong, said.

As for AOL's long-term plans, Armstrong is as confident as ever. "We are 10 times faster this year than last year. And we expect to be 10 times faster next year than this year," he said. "AOL is playing offense."