When adding Socialthing to a Web site a basic navigation bar appears at the bottom of the page. Visitors to a Socialthing-enabled Web site get a unified sign-on allowing them to chat and send instant messages to others. They can also syndicate content from other social networks including AOL’s Bebo, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

Joanna Shields

Privacy settings for sharing content allow the user to be in control of publishing activity. When an action is taken on a site, Socialthing asks for the user’s permission to publish their action into a Lifestream that is shared with their friends.

"Socialthing turns any media into social media, making it easy for people to share their experiences in real time with their friends, wherever they are on the Web," said Joanna Shields, President of AOL People Networks.

"Built on AOL’s best-of-breed messaging technology, unrivaled social networking and media aggregation tools, Socialthing enables users to converse, connect and broadcast messages and their activities to friends on the Web."

Last week AOL launched Socialthing on The Boot, its online country music destination and plans to roll it out to its movie blog, Cinematical in the coming weeks.

MediaGlow, AOL’s centralized publishing unit is in the process of launching Socialthing across its network of more than 75 sites that reach 181 million users globally.

PoliticsDaily.com features a mix of political views and will focus on in-depth political analysis instead of breaking news. AOL says as more people go online for political news and information that its new site will offer information across the political spectrum.

The site is led by former New York Times Washington correspondent Melinda Henneberger, who serves as Editor in Chief of PoliticsDaily.com. The site is part of the AOL News network, which receives more than 27 million unique visitors every month, according to comScore.

"As the political world has increasingly moved online, voters need a resource to help put the events of the moment in perspective in an intelligent and concise manner. We looked at the current political media landscape and felt there was a need to deliver old-school political journalism in a sustainable format," said Marty Moe, Senior Vice President, MediaGlow.

"We have created a site that we hope is appealing and useful to mainstream audiences across various demographics and political views by offering an engaging and informative forum to give the public a chance to participate in and share in political discourse."

Writers for PoliticsDaily include Walter Shapiro, former columnist for USA Today and former bureau chief for Salon; Lynn Sweet, blogger and Washington Bureau Chief of the Chicago Sun-Times; and Patricia Murphy, founder of Citizen Jane Politics, a non-partisan website for women.

The site will include blogs such as "Woman Up" that will cover political issues from a woman’s perspective and "The Cram" a student-focused blog on political news.
 

Bill Wilson

“MediaGlow sites once again showed strong consumer reach and engagement in March by tapping into current events and creating valuable experiences for users and advertisers," says MediaGlow President Bill Wilson. "By building and growing new brands over the past 2 years in combination with our strong established brands, we are providing entertaining, innovative and interactive content across various topics and passion points to tap into the accelerating fragmentation of the Web."

MediaGlow recently announced that it would launch 30 new targeted sites this year. So far sites that have launched include music sites NoiseCreep, Spinner, TheBoot, TheBoomBox, and TourTracker.

AOL in general continues to see a good share of Internet users’ attention. They came in at number 4 in the top ten parent companies on the web in the US for March, and number 5 for top ten web brands.

Many AOL properties are showing up in the top five in terms of unique visitors in their respective categories according to data from comScore. These include sites like AOL Music, AOL Television, MapQuest, AIM, Bebo, Fanhouse, etc.

The same even goes for some MediaGlow sites: BlackVoices, TheBoot, TheBoomBox, Asylum, StyleList, Lemondrop, Spinner, Horoscopes, Latino, Truveo, Urlesque, and AOL homepages.

Additionally, according to Nielsen Online, AOL users spent more than three hours and forty-five minutes on its sites or applications in February, which is the most of any online company.

AOL.com grew 5 percent in pageviews, 6 percent in unique visitors and 32 percent in total minutes year over year, partly due to it opening up to third-party content, including email and social networks in the fall of 2008.

Bill Wilson

In January, AOL announced the creation of MediaGlow that centralizes the company’s publishing efforts, with the goal of expanding its global reach.

AOL News also had a record month, reaching its largest audience ever with over 30.7 million unique visitors as well as a 48 percent increase in pageviews, 19 percent increase in total minutes and 18 percent increase in unique visitors.

"MediaGlow continues to grow audience reach and engagement by leaning into the fragmentation of the Web and creating valuable brands that attract new and larger audiences across numerous valuable demographics," said Bill Wilson, President, MediaGlow.

"This helps our advertising partners reach a highly engaged and receptive audience across a wide range of brand offerings."
 

AOL says its redesigned homepage grew 5 percent in page views, 12 percent in unique visitors, a record 33 percent in total minutes and 6 percent in total visits year-over-year.

Bill Wilson

The jump in growth could be due to AOL’s efforts to become more open. It recently began allowing users to access email accounts from Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail. It also allowed users to access social networking sites from its homepage including Bebo, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

In January AOL announced the creation of MediaGlow, which aims to, centralizes the company’s publishing efforts and expand its global reach. Under the MediaGlow umbrella AOL has plans to launch 30-targeted sites this year.

At the beginning of 2009 MediaGlow launched its first targeted site, FanHouse that replaced AOL Sports. Other vertical sites are slated to be rolled out with an emphasis on specialized sports fans, including one focused on Mixed Martial Arts.

"MediaGlow has started 2009 by reaching its largest audience to date and building core brands that are at scale."

"By leaning into the fragmentation of the Web, we are creating valuable brands that are driving engagement and attracting a larger audience," said Bill Wilson, President, MediaGlow.

AOL says its redesigned homepage grew 5 percent in page views, 12 percent in unique visitors, a record 33 percent in total minutes and 6 percent in total visits year-over-year.

Bill Wilson

The jump in growth could be due to AOL’s efforts to become more open. It recently began allowing users to access email accounts from Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail. It also allowed users to access social networking sites from its homepage including Bebo, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

In January AOL announced the creation of MediaGlow, which aims to, centralizes the company’s publishing efforts and expand its global reach. Under the MediaGlow umbrella AOL has plans to launch 30-targeted sites this year.

At the beginning of 2009 MediaGlow launched its first targeted site, FanHouse that replaced AOL Sports. Other vertical sites are slated to be rolled out with an emphasis on specialized sports fans, including one focused on Mixed Martial Arts.

"MediaGlow has started 2009 by reaching its largest audience to date and building core brands that are at scale."

"By leaning into the fragmentation of the Web, we are creating valuable brands that are driving engagement and attracting a larger audience," said Bill Wilson, President, MediaGlow.

AOL says its redesigned homepage grew 5 percent in page views, 12 percent in unique visitors, a record 33 percent in total minutes and 6 percent in total visits year-over-year.

Bill Wilson

The jump in growth could be due to AOL’s efforts to become more open. It recently began allowing users to access email accounts from Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail. It also allowed users to access social networking sites from its homepage including Bebo, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

In January AOL announced the creation of MediaGlow, which aims to, centralizes the company’s publishing efforts and expand its global reach. Under the MediaGlow umbrella AOL has plans to launch 30-targeted sites this year.

At the beginning of 2009 MediaGlow launched its first targeted site, FanHouse that replaced AOL Sports. Other vertical sites are slated to be rolled out with an emphasis on specialized sports fans, including one focused on Mixed Martial Arts.

"MediaGlow has started 2009 by reaching its largest audience to date and building core brands that are at scale."

"By leaning into the fragmentation of the Web, we are creating valuable brands that are driving engagement and attracting a larger audience," said Bill Wilson, President, MediaGlow.

AOL says its redesigned homepage grew 5 percent in page views, 12 percent in unique visitors, a record 33 percent in total minutes and 6 percent in total visits year-over-year.

Bill Wilson

The jump in growth could be due to AOL’s efforts to become more open. It recently began allowing users to access email accounts from Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail. It also allowed users to access social networking sites from its homepage including Bebo, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

In January AOL announced the creation of MediaGlow, which aims to, centralizes the company’s publishing efforts and expand its global reach. Under the MediaGlow umbrella AOL has plans to launch 30-targeted sites this year.

At the beginning of 2009 MediaGlow launched its first targeted site, FanHouse that replaced AOL Sports. Other vertical sites are slated to be rolled out with an emphasis on specialized sports fans, including one focused on Mixed Martial Arts.

"MediaGlow has started 2009 by reaching its largest audience to date and building core brands that are at scale."

"By leaning into the fragmentation of the Web, we are creating valuable brands that are driving engagement and attracting a larger audience," said Bill Wilson, President, MediaGlow.

Unique visitors grew from a monthly average of 70.4 million to 73.4 million, and total minutes increased from 40 billion to 47 billion year-over-year, up 17 percent, according to comScore.

Bill Wilson
President
MediaGlow

Last week, AOL announced the launch of MediaGlow that centralizes the company’s publishing efforts and plans to launch 30-targeted sites in 2009.

"Over the past 18 months, we have successfully built a strong portfolio of valuable brands that are at scale and attracting larger, more engaged and more valuable audiences, and that are in leading positions in every major online category," said Bill Wilson, President, MediaGlow.

"The year-end comScore numbers prove that our strategy is working. And with the creation of MediaGlow, we have the opportunity to accelerate this growth in 2009 by leaning into audience fragmentation on the Web."

AOL’s properties continued to see solid growth in December, extending year-over-year growth in unique visitors to 23 consecutive months. Unique visitors in December rose 2 percent, page views climbed 101 percent and time spent increased 54 percent year-over-year.

In addition the company recently revamped AOL.com, opening up to third- party content, email and social networks in 2008, growing 7 percent in page views, 16 percent in unique visitors, 34 percent in total minutes and 14 percent in total visits, year-over-year.

MediaGlow joins AOL’s advertising platform, Platform-A along with its social media effort, Peoples Networks to become the third core business of the company.

AOL says over the past year its page views have increased 40 percent, engagement increased 20 percent and its audience grew to 70 million monthly visitors.

"Our vision was to rebuild AOL into three core businesses — publishing, advertising and social media. With the launch of MediaGlow, we have completed our goal in less than 18 months," said Randy Falco, Chairman and CEO of AOL.

"AOL now efficiently delivers the most relevant and engaging content and is able to uniquely maximize display advertising opportunities for advertisers and publishers across the Web. MediaGlow provides us with the ability to extend our publishing success and puts AOL in a very strong position for the future."

Bill Wilson
MediaGlow

Bill Wilson, Executive Vice President of Programming for AOL, will now be President of MediaGlow. Under Wilson AOL rebuilt its portal AOL.com while launching more than a dozen new targeted content sites in the past year.

"From our reinvented AOL.com to our vertical content sites, we are creating experiences that successfully reach key demographics and provide unique, relevant and valuable content to consumers and solutions for advertisers," said Wilson." As an ad-supported company, this is a huge asset."

AOL operates around 75 sites and plans to add more than 30 sites in 2009 focused on reality television, soap operas, horror films and the launch of a new pop culture site geared towards kids.