AOL Weblogs?
Down at the bottom of today's post by Dave Winer comes a rather interesting rumor - AOL may be developing a weblog publishing system.
Considering how popular the "medium" has become, and because AOL is actively searching for new revenue streams, the news is hardly surprising. What is interesting is that according to Winer's source, AOL Time Warner has 400 people secretly working on the project. To put that in perspective, 20 AOL employees are assigned to the Mozilla project.
So the obvious question becomes - does it really take 400 people to develop a blogging application? And for that matter, can 400 people really develop a better system than what is currently out there?
Comments
I believe the answer to your questions are no and no... in no particular order.
Posted by: Chris J. Davis at May 7, 2003 2:22 PM
Um, do the words overkill and bloatware come to mind for anyone else?
Posted by: Paul Burdick at May 7, 2003 2:30 PM
You can make the best blog application in the business with just two people... assuming their first names are Mena and Ben.
Posted by: Sunil at May 7, 2003 2:39 PM
I feel they are going to try and make a LiveJournal type setup for their users (for a small extra monthly fee, of course) and will advertise it as a simple way to create a webpage without all the hassle.
Oh yes, it will most definitely be bloated and full of useless/ugly features that not even newbies will use.
Posted by: Erik at May 7, 2003 2:40 PM
When I visited Pyra (makers of Blogger) in SF back in early 2000, they were just 4 guys on a rented floor the size of a large bedroom. And look to what they did.
Needless to say, the idea of 400 people working on a blog application strikes me as ludicrous and overkill at the same time. Not even Microsoft has that many people working on a single project besides Windows, I guess.
Posted by: beto at May 7, 2003 2:59 PM
Leave it to AOL to make things more complicated than they need to be. I'd heard that this was happening, but I had no idea that they'd put 400 people on the job.
Posted by: patricia at May 7, 2003 3:10 PM
Maybe they just want development to go 400 times faster.
;)
Posted by: nathan at May 7, 2003 3:23 PM
Typical AOL, wouldn't it be great if they put 400 people to work on Mozilla ?
What are they upto then ? A rehashed version of AOLPress maybe ... lol! Maybe you can instant message to your blog ? or organise entries by "Keyword".
Posted by: Paul at May 7, 2003 3:50 PM
I find it hard to believe that with all the money that AOL Time Warner is losing on AOL (I heard that for all the money they're spending trying to get new customers via advertising, cds, etc. that they could give each of their current customers $2,000) that they would finance such a large staff. 400 people? That screams of desperate times.
Posted by: Mathew at May 7, 2003 4:22 PM
Who uses 400 people on a single project? NASA? Probably not.
Posted by: tracy at May 7, 2003 9:45 PM
As a believer in the free market and the "great equalizing" effect that the Internet traditionally has had (there's no difference between America Online's webserver and my own site, other than the URL), this can only be a good thing...
On the other hand, considering what Microsoft did with IE, Outlook Express, and numerous other applications, I don't like it.
Posted by: Hasan at May 7, 2003 11:25 PM
As a believer in the free market and the "great equalizing" effect that the Internet traditionally has had (there's no difference between America Online's webserver and my own site, other than the URL), this can only be a good thing...
On the other hand, considering what Microsoft did with IE, Outlook Express, and numerous other applications, I don't like it.
Posted by: Hasan at May 7, 2003 11:26 PM
I don't know about 400, but also we don't know what they are doing; it might involve hard coding into the new version of AOL and also probably a proprietary AIM feature where you could IM a journal to your website. Who knows what else...
It's not about making a better system; it's only about making an AOL system. It will probably dumb down the whole experience so the average 10 year-old can have a weblog. That opens up a whole new market, and opens up new revenue.
Posted by: Steve at May 8, 2003 12:32 AM
Was the Winer post the first you'd heard of this? And it isn't the app that will be a killer, it's the pro content from every journalists employed by AOL/Time Warner. I know, go ahead, call me paranoid.
Posted by: Mel at May 8, 2003 1:42 AM
"You can make the best blog application in the business with just two people… assuming their first names are Mena and Ben."
That unfortunatley is an entirely subjective opinion. I personally hate movable type, it is too restrictive with its codebase and doesn't really appeal to those of us who like to get "our hands dirty" in the code, and then share our endeavours with the world. For my money... which is $0 no matter how I use it, commercial or personal, b2 is the way to go.
Posted by: Chris J. Davis at May 8, 2003 7:52 AM
Dave's source is wrong. AOL is working on weblogs, but there are not 400 people working on it. Probably more like 10-20.
Posted by: jkottke at May 8, 2003 11:10 AM
That's nearly as bad as the article I read about MS trying to push having internet access in public toilets.
Posted by: brandy at May 8, 2003 1:25 PM
If the lightbulb goes out, 1 holds the bulb while the other 399, rotate the design building.
Posted by: Chris at May 8, 2003 1:31 PM
