AOL does something smart for once
AOL is doing something smart: picking up talents during recession
"David Weir writes on Bnet that the thousands of journalists being let go from newspapers, magazines, and television networks have increasingly been showing up on AOL's payroll — over 1,500 in the last eighteen months — a number AOL expects to double or even triple over the coming year. 'Over time, talent is a fixed cost,' says Marty Moe, Senior Vice-President of AOL Media. 'You can syndicate it, distribute it as you scale. Furthermore, we are already the largest branded content company in the US, with an audience of 75 million domestic uniques. At our size, we can leverage the cost of our publishing and content management systems along with the talent and make the whole thing do-able on an advertising model.' Weir writes that AOL's turnaround started three years ago via the acquisition of Weblogs, Inc., and its set of branded verticals, including Engadget in technology, Autoblog covering the auto industry, and Joystiq covering gaming."
Assuming that they can afford a long-term strategy, this sounds like a good long-term strategy as long as they can make sure that they are hiring talents at ... appropriate salaries (i.e. slackers for slacker salary, and the rare geniuses at recession bargain salary).
Too bad AOL and Time Warner hasn't split ties yet—it doesn't look like I can buy AOL stock without investing in that detestable TIME magazine.