"Community has been a core element of both AOL and Netscape since their inception and will continue to be. As the text on the site explains, we wanted to give a more traditional portal alternative to the Netscape users who requested it. You can rest assured that social news will continue to be an important part of what we do."
I spent a few years at AOL and Netscape and my translation of the above would read:
1) We've already decided to stop putting resources into this and redeploy them, we just have to decide how to spin it in a good way.
2) The site isn't making the money or getting the page view and uniques growth we hoped, so why not go back to the traditional portal that our older users want and that's so much less expensive to pipe a bunch of feeds into?
3) Social news is the albatross around our neck, but we've embraced it as the only hope we have to muster any attention at all from the 18-34 year olds who are no longer focusing on AOL email. If they quit AIM, we're dead.
I give it till September when the change over happens.
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