This funny little piece of email just got forwarded to me …

From: “****, ***”
Date: February 3, 2012 10:11:04 AM PST
To: Greg Barto [@ TechCrunch]
Subject: NapQuest

Hey Greg

It is one of our goals to get a “nap room” set-up in every location. Basically, it’s a closed room where we would put a chaise or couch, darken the windows and allow people to nap as the [sic] like. This is high on the priority list for Arianna and your office is one of the few where we don’t yet have it in place.

When I visited your office on Wednesday, I looked around. It strikes me that the room (3rd office from the back corner) might be a good choice?

There are currently a couple of desks in there we would need to remove. Then I would purchase the furniture and arrange to have the window glass tinted.

What do you think? I just need your agreement to move ahead and I will coordinate making it happen. Let me know.

Thanks,

**** ****
Sr. Facilities Manager, PA/SF
Corporate Services, AOL Inc.
395 Page Mill Road Palo Alto, CA 94306

After making a bunch of “nap room” jokes and laughing uncontrollably like a hyperactive child around the office, I’ve finally figured out why this “high Arianna priority” (LOL) strikes me as so funny — other than the fact THAT IT IS ACTUALLY CALLED NapQuest.

This is Silicon Valley, where we herald founders like Jack Dorsey for working 16 hour days (at not one, but two! companies). People at startups are never not working.

Silicon Valley absolutely, positively doesn’t need a nap room because in theory we don’t sleep, let alone nap (and if we do need to nap — like in an emergency — we take that shiz home, far far away from hungry competitors!).

Please Aol Mr. Sr. Facilities Manager, take that money and buy us a bunch of Diet Coke to drink late at night or that great beef jerky we used to have or a copyediting slave intern or passes to Burning Man or anything but a room specifically designed for being less productive.

Oh sure, it could be worse. At least they’re not trying to install one of these things. 

Update: PandoDaily founder Sarah Lacy weighs in on the tragic potential fate of her old office.

Image: Roger Jegg – Fotodesign-Jegg.de

AOL reported better than expected fourth quarter earnings this morning. The company, which owns TechCrunch, reported revenue of $576.8 million, which is down 3 percent from Q4 2010 revenue of $596 million. Earnings came in at $0.23 per share, or $22.8 million, which is down 66 percent from $66.2 million a year ago. Analysts expected $0.16 per share.

AOL says total revenue decline was its lowest rate of revenue decline in 5 years. While global advertising revenue was 10%, subscription revenue declined by 18%. AOl also saw a 15% growth in global display revenue and a 20% growth in third party network revenue.

“AOL took a large step forward in Q4 and I am very pleased with the way we ended the year,” said AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong. “Our Q4 results highlight AOL’s ability to methodically improve our consumer offering and financial performance. We continue to invest in AOL and will continue to improve our operations during 2012.”

The company says that traffic was flat from Q3 2011 as “growth in the Huffington Post Media Group sites offset declines at MapQuest and AIM.”

Now this is just hilarious. Apparently this Arizona woman has been paying for “email” for almost a decade — even though it’s been available free for a while and free for Aol users since 2006.  According to a year-old “New Yorker” article by Ken Auletta, over 75% of the dial-up portion of Aol’s 3.5 million subscribers are like Traci Casale. So why are these idiots people still paying for email? I mean you know things are bad when a publication called “Arizona Family” is making fun of you.

Well actually Casale and others like her are not being charged for email, they’re technically still paying for the dial-up plan they signed up for originally, which they didn’t cancel after Aol made its software package free.

“One day I just looked at, you know, you’re going through your bills and every bit helps right now and I’m like, ‘Why am I paying for email? No one else is,’” Casale says naively in the report.

Maybe it’s not entirely her fault? According to one source, Aol intentionally doesn’t try too hard to educate these legacy customers about their email package now being free. We also heard that when Aol came out with the new “Project Phoenix” Mail product in 2010, many in Aol Consumer Applications wanted to market it as being free but their suggestions were overturned by higher-ups as the percentage of misinformed subscribers still ponying up just to use Aol Mail is very profitable.

Aol’s over 3.5 million dial-up subscribers brought in $191 million in revenue last quarter — which is still where the majority of Aol’s profits come from according to Auletta.

The reason why these local news reports are so sad is that even Cave Creek, Arizonans have figured out dial-up is a dying business. Sure Aol tries to sugarcoat this in earnings reports by boasting about its lowered subscription churn rate, but in plain English this basically means that there are fewer people leaving because there are fewer people to leave.

“AOL Mail is a web-based product that is free to all users regardless of their paid relationship with us,” Aol PR told me when I inquired as to why these headlines (somewhat mistakenly) accuse them of charging for it. Well, that explanation is much more clear than this vaguely-worded “Project Phoenix” press release.

Disclosure (in case you live under a rock): Techcrunch is owned by Aol.

]]> http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/04/aol-mail/feed/ 0 Screen Shot 2012-01-04 at 7.19.39 PM atsotsis http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/30/aol-zombies/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/30/aol-zombies/#comments Fri, 30 Dec 2011 23:35:13 +0000 Alexia Tsotsis http://techcrunch.com/?p=476047 In case you haven't noticed ;), it's an especially slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow time for the tech industry. So slow that some Aol employees -- the only one I recognize is Sol Lipman -- made a video about the recent Aol talent exodus, using ZOMBIES as a metaphor for all the people who've decided to leave Aol. ]]>

In case you haven’t noticed ;), it’s an especially slooooooooooooooooooooow time for the tech industry. So slow that some Aol employees — the only one I recognize is Sol Lipman — made a video about the recent Aol talent exodus, using ZOMBIES as a metaphor for all the people who’ve decided to leave Aol.

If I understand the video correctly, the zombie attack was apparently sparked by some design changes made to the Huffington Post (rimshot), which turn recent departures Brad Garlinghouse and Kiersten Hollars into zombies, who in turn zombify the rest of Aol’s Palo Alto HQ.”We should have quit when Maser left!” is a reference to Aol VP Mike Maser, who was formerly at Digg.

While the video honestly isn’t that funny, it is sort of endearing, as the employees come to realize that the only way to fend off the zombie attacks (/talent exodus) is with “quality” Aol products like Editions — which literally kill zombies in the movie.* Using the acronym MAMA (Mail Aim Mobile About.me) to fight of the undead, the Aol* survivors proclaim 2012 as the year the company turns around, “Our friends may have been eaten by Zombies, but we’re still going to have a lot of fun.”

Awwwwwwwwww.

* Which is weird, because they’re inadvertently comparing Aol products to a bullet to the head, but I digress.

*Yes, I know it’s officially AOL (not Aol), but I just write it this way to piss off Robin — who for some reason is really stubborn about us spelling it in all UPPERCASE.

Ex-Googler and previously head of AOL Media and Studios – and I guess you could say the former boss of my boss’s boss – David Eun has been appointed Executive Vice President at consumer electronics giant Samsung Electronics.

At Samsung, Eun will be helping the company develop a ‘global media strategy’ for its array of digital TVs, smartphones, tablets and other connected devices.

Eun left – or was forced to leave – AOL in February 2011 after the company’s Media Group was restructured around Huffington Post after the latter’s $315 million acquisition by AOL.

There have been a number of rumors circulating around Yahoo, Microsoft, and Aol of late, most of them focusing on a potential Aol/Yahoo merger, or Yahoo’s acquisition by Aol or Microsoft, etc. Well, it seems the companies have officially become linked, but they’ve run into each other’s arms not by way of M&A, but by way of display ads. Yes, the three internet behemoths today announced agreements that they hope will improve the process of buying and selling premium online display inventory. In other words, the agreements will allow each to offer the other’s display ads to their respective customers.

With agencies and advertisers now able to pick and choose between Yahoo’s Network Plus, Aol’s Advertising.com and Microsoft’s Media network, each of which has different strengths in data, optimization, packaging, etc., this strategic partnership creates somewhat of a mega ad network. Online advertising is all about scale, and with this threefold growth in inventory, the three companies are looking to more quickly achieve the scale that is far more difficult to reach alone.

While the companies hope that this agreement will drive better returns for their customers (see Yahoo Executive VP Ross Levinsohn’s statement here), it remains to be seen just how “premium” the partnership’s ads will be. Premium ad inventories are inherently a product of scarcity, which seems to be a bit at odds with the scale/network approach the companies are taking, where nobody really knows what they’re selling.

What’s more, while this may improve the process of buying and selling online display inventory, it’s also a play to fend off the meteoric rise of Facebook (and, in turn, Google, which owns a 75 percent share of search advertising). Really, everyone is spending more time on Facebook, what with their measly 800 million users, and advertisers are following them there. To that point, Facebook now accounts for one out of every three ad impressions in the U.S. Up until now, no other web property in the U.S. really comes close. (See our coverage here.)

Thanks to the tables below from eMarketer, we see that Facebook leads the way in net display revenues in the U.S. with over $2 billion this year. Yahoo comes in second, with Microsoft and Aol far behind Google in third and fourth. The same ranking is true for share of the online display ad market, with Facebook holding 16 percent over Yahoo’s 13 percent — and eMarketer expects both Google and Facebook’s share to increase significantly next year to 19 percent and 12 percent, putting Google neck-and-neck with Yahoo.

What’s more, in terms of growth in online display advertising, Facebook saw a 66 percent increase this year, far outpacing the rest of the pack. I’ll hold off there, because you probably get the picture. Yahoo has the biggest ad network in terms of revenues and marketshare of this new ad trifecta, which certainly makes this an advantageous partnership for Microsoft and Aol, at least from this perspective.

But, in the end, at least for the foreseeable future, it’s hard to see this as anything but a bandaid. Facebook’s growth in display advertising isn’t slowing down any time soon.

AOL reported third-quarter earnings this morning. Revenue was down 6 percent to $531.7 million. The company swung to a loss in terms of net income, losing $2.6 million, or $0.02 per share. Analysts expected a loss of loss of 7 cents per share. Disclosure: AOL is the parent company of TechCrunch.

But AOL was able to grow global advertising by 8%, driven by 28% and 15% growth in third party network and global display advertising revenue Tim Armstrong, Chairman and CEO said in a statement: “We continue to build strong consumer experiences as we execute our strategy to build the premium branded media company for the internet. Our share repurchases underlie our belief in the value of AOL and our strategy.”

Search and contextual revenue declined 15%. In local, Patch surpassed 10 million monthly unique visitors and 10,000 bloggers on its platform. Armstrong added about Patch, “We believe it’s a very good investment.” He added, “We’re headed to being one of the largest local and national providers of content.” The platform also has around 5,000 advertisers.

The Huffington Post launched or relaunched 18 properties and surpassed 35 million monthly unique visitors in Q3. AOL’s traffic as a whole was flat for the quarte; properties saw 107 million average monthly unique users, up 1 percent from last year. Traffic to the Huffington Post Media Group came in at 97 million unique users per month, flat from last year.

He also said the company is adding social and commerce components to advertising, and said that the AOL will be debuting a new social ad format for advertisers soon.

As of September 30, 2011, AOL had $444.1 million of cash.

Traditional publishers and fledgling digital publications alike are trying to find the best ways to monetize their content on the Web and take advantage of the benefits offered by hyperlocal content and the targeted advertising that (should) come with it. PaperG, an advertising technology startup founded in 2007, is trying to become that go-to solution for small and established online publishers that are looking for a quick and easy solution for their hyperlocal advertising needs.

PaperG has built a solution that automates local ad creation, sales, and management for these online publishers that automatically creates a custom rich-media ad for any local business in less than 60 seconds, according to PaperG Founder and CEO Victor Wong. In August of last year, the startup added well-known publishers including the Los Angeles Times, MediaNews Group, Lee Enterprises, and Sun Times Media Group to its roster of publishing partners, which also includes names like Hearst, McClatchy, Gannett, New York Times Regional, Boston Globe, Newsday and New York Post.

Today, the startup is announcing that it will be providing its local display advertising technology to another big player in the local news space: AOL Inc.’s hyperlocal platform of sites, Patch.com. (Disclosure: TechCrunch is owned by Aol.) PaperG’s technology will be released in over 100 of Patch’s markets, enabling Patch sales teams access instant ad creation, management, and optimization for their litany of local advertisers.

The value proposition here for Aol’s Patch is that PaperG’s technology, which supports Flash, HTML5, and mobile ad units, can automatically build a custom ad for any local business in a jiffy (an example of which you can check out to the right). All that a sales rep or advertiser needs is the business’ name and address, and PaperG’s solution crawls the Web, aggregating all the important info for the business, including reviews, location, etc., and presto, it creates a display ad without the sales rep having so much as to open a new tab.

The key here, Wong says, is to supercharging sales and giving small newspapers and publishers an easy ad-creation platform without having to know how to code or create ad copy themselves. In the majority of situations, he says, the ad that’s created ends up being the final product, although teams then have the ability to tweak the design, color, ad copy, and so on, to complete the optimization process.

Wong says that PaperG wants local merchants to be able to target these ads as much as possible, through geo targeting, targeting by category, to enable small businesses to target the right audience and interest group the first time without the hassle. For merchants, the solution is absolutely free, and for publishers, the ability to avoid having to pay $50 for every ad that a solution creates is a huge leg up.

Thus, to make money, PaperG creates these commercial agreements, like the one it’s formed with Patch, to make its technology accessible to the variety of local outlets that are seeing syndicated content from the publisher. Those publishers have the opportunity to offer hyperlocal, targeted ads to an audience that is (they hope) far more likely to click on ad for their local pizza shop, which in turn makes those local businesses benefiting from this discounted advertising happy campers.

And so far, the strategy seems to be working, as Wong says that it’s technology has been able to double the close rates for sales reps. While Google has a strong business with AdWords and is leading search engine advertising by a long shot, Wong says that no one is really doing this for local display advertising, which remains one of the largest white spaces in online advertising, he says. With a solution that simplifies local advertising for online publishers and the small businesses they represent, this PaperG’s strategy potentially has some legs.

And considering the fact that Patch did its due diligence and considered a number of solutions before finally deciding to go with PaperG, the partnership is further confirmation that it they just might be onto something.

PaperG raised $1.1 million from LaunchCapital, Brian O’Kelley, Mark Potts, and Steve Taylor back in December 2009. For more on the startup, check ‘em out at home here.

TechCrunch TV is now really TechCrunch TV. When TCTV launched last year, the focus was on viewing our videos on the computer. Not on TV. Ok, we called it “TechCrunch TV” because it sounded a lot better than “TechCrunch Video”. But today, we are launching on the AOL HD platform and you can find us on your connected TV set.

Our videos are live on Roku, Boxee, Divx and Yahoo Connected TV platforms. Together, these platforms reach over 12 million devices. And that number is growing. A new report by Strategy Analytics says 42 million homes in the US and Europe are now using Connected TV devices. Don’t be surprised if more platforms get added to AOL HD as well. (AOL, the owner of TechCrunch, didn’t want me to say anything about that. Oh well.)

You can find these shows on the channel:

• Founder Stories: Chris Dixon takes and gives advice to entrepreneurs.
• Fly or Die: John Biggs and Erick Schonfeld give a “fly” or “die” verdict to new products.
• Keen On: Andrew Keen interviews leading thinkers and writers about technology issues.

We are working to get other shows like TC Cribs on the channel, but AOL HD plays only HD content and Cribs is shot in SD. We’ll be changing that soon.

Both on-stage and backstage videos from our Disrupt conferences are available, so you can watch those events from your living room.

The TechCrunch videos appear under AOL HD’s Technology channel, along with other videos from Engadget and Translogic. Robert DelaCruz, General Manager for AOL HD, says “I’m very pleased to include TechCrunch to the channel lineup. TechCrunch further strengthens AOL HD’s technology offering with the latest in technology, from breaking news to startups to gadgets.”

If you want to learn more or get installation instructions, head over to hd.aol.com. Otherwise, lean back and start watching us on your TV. Of course, you can continue to watch on your computer, mobile phone or tablet as well. Those hackers out there who were already using Airplay, or Apple TV, or other means to view our content on TV, will now be joined by a much larger group who can see TechCrunch TV on TV.

Salim Ismail has one of the liveliest minds and most eclectic resumes in the Valley. The founding Executive Director of Singularity University and the founder of a number of interesting start-ups including Angstro and PubSub Concepts, he was also a VP at Yahoo! where he launched and ran Brickhouse, their internal incubator.

So, borrowing a familiar work from ex-Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, I asked Ismail if Yahoo! was now fucked. Yes, he confirmed, it was. And so, he added, was AOL and most other companies struggling to reinvent themselves in today’s increasingly brutal competitive landscape.

Vulgarity aside, Ismail’s message is incredibly important for every technology company struggling to maintain their innovation. Today’s Facebook or Twitter, he told me, is tomorrow’s Yahoo! So how, exactly, can a company build innovation into its DNA? What Salim Ismail says may seem, in some ways, obvious – but it’s actually the difference between Yahoo! and Google – the multi billion dollar difference between glittering success and abject failure in today’s creatively destructive economy.

For more on Salim Ismail’s interview, watch the video in this post from yesterday on the future of university education.

The Huffington Post Media Group (which also owns TechCrunch) has teamed up with newspaper, magazine and website publisher Le Monde and Les Nouvelles Editions Indépendantes (LNEI) to launch ‘Le Huffington Post’, a French edition of the news and opinion portal. The new joint venture is currently recruiting editors to prepare for a launch before the end of 2011.

Each of the three aforementioned partners will be shareholders in Le Huffington Post.

The French site will combine local editorial resources of Le Monde, one of France’s leading dailies, with The HuffPo’s typical combination of reporting, aggregation and discussion services. LNEI will also contribute original editorial content through its network of journalists and bloggers.

M Publicite, also part of The Le Monde group, will partner on the site’s advertising.

Huffington Post Canada launched in May, while the site landed in the UK last July.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks like they haven’t yet secured either LeHuffingtonPost.com or LeHuffingtonPost.fr. Not a great start.

Yahoo and ABC just wrapped up a press conference at ABC’s Times Square studio to announce a major partnership between the two companies: they’re launching a new ‘News and Information Alliance’ that will see ABC News get a much more prominent presence throughout Yahoo. ABC News will also be launching several ‘web-first’ video series’ that will be appearing on Yahoo.

In short, Yahoo is reinventing its news site: ABC is bringing the premium content to the table, Yahoo is bringing its 100 million users.

A video played at the beginning of the conference made the mission clear: Yahoo and ABC News are gunning for CNN and other online news portals like The Huffington Post. To do that, Yahoo is augmenting its news articles with content produced by ABC News, including several new ‘web-first’ digital series featuring ABC News’s anchors. The video denounced the “blitz of headlines and information” seen across the web (they have a point), and says that the team are setting out to create richer stories.

The first video to be streamed as part of the partnership will be a live stream of George Stephanopoulos interviewing President Obama beginning at 2:35 PM EST this afternoon.

Yahoo and ABC say that “creativity is key” in the alliance — they’re looking to create content specifically suited for Yahoo’s web properties, as well as tablet and other mobile form factors. GoodMorningAmerica.com will be launching as a new portal on Yahoo News.

To monetize, at least initially, Yahoo and ABC will be selling advertising against its premium content. I asked if there were any plans to eventually monetize this content through in-app purchases and/or subscriptions. Ross Levinsohn, executive VP of Americas at Yahoo, didn’t rule it out, but says he isn’t going to predict the future. My hunch? Yep.

So is this a good move? I like it, though I want to see just what form this originally produced content takes, how long it remains exclusive on the web, and how much creativity will actually be involved. I think news on the web still has a long way to go, and more high-quality, premium content online is a good thing — and inevitable.

One reporter asked a series of questions about Carol Bartz, eventually asking Levinsohn if he’s gunning to take the helm. Levinsohn says this is the best job he’s had and gave an anecdote about his work history and talked about building good experiences (sounds like he’s saying “no”, but I’m not sure he explicitly said that at any point in his answer).

The Huffington Post Media Group (HPMG), which I should point out is owned by our parent company AOL, is to announce an acquisition today, along with some key stats, hires and new site launches. Kara Swisher obtained and published the press release.

HMPG has acquired Localocracy, an “online town common” where registered voters weigh in on local issues and come together to solve problems in their communities, using their real names.

According to the release, The Huffington Post has recruited its leadership team (founders Conor White-Sullivan and Aaron Soules, and tech lead Jay Boice).

According to Swisher, HPMG paid less than $1 million for Localocracy.

The Huffington Post is also launching four sites this week (Huff/Post50, HuffPost Gay Voices, HuffPost Weddings and HuffPost High School), the latest of 21 new verticals since the merger with AOL, which occurred last March.

In addition, HMPG says it has hired former NYT blogger Lisa Belkin as Senior Columnist; she’ll be covering parenting, work/life balance and family.

Finally, The Huffington Post says it has recorded its largest number of unique monthly visitors ever (37 million), and for the first time topped 1 billion page views.

The network also posted a record 5.1 million comments in August 2011.

At the risk of not only beating a dead horse, but cremating it with self-reflective posts, this video is too good not to post. Jonathan Mann, our favorite singer/songwriter is back with a song about what else: the end of TechCrunch.

As we begin this new era, it’s a fitting tribute to the old one. TechCrunch is dead, long live TechCrunch.

This is a post I never thought I’d have to write. Unfortunately, I do. And the worst part about it is that it should be Michael Arrington writing this post, not me.

But he can’t.

TechCrunch is on the precipice. As soon as tomorrow, Mike may be thrown out of the company he founded. Or he may not. No one knows. And if he is, he will be replaced by — well, again, no one knows. No one knows much of anything. Certainly no one at TechCrunch. This site is about to change forever and we’re in the total fucking dark. I’ve been able to piece together little bits of information here and there, and it’s not looking good. Hence, this post.

By now, if you read TechCrunch, you likely know about the nuclear situation that has exploded over the past several days. Mike unveiled an investing entity known as the “CrunchFund” with full AOL support — so much support, mind you, that they’re the largest backers of the fund — only to have his legs kicked out from under him due to what can only be described as nonsensical political infighting and really poor communication. To make matters worse, some Journalists (with a big “J” and even bigger senses of entitlement) have proceeded to pile on, despite having no real knowledge — at all — of the way TechCrunch actually works. And now here we are.

Earlier this evening, I wrote a post on my personal blog attempting to explain to those outside our company how TechCrunch actually works from an editorial perspective. The notion that Mike, or anyone else, investing in a company would dictate some sort of giant conflicted agenda is laughable. Literally. If Mike tried to get me to write some unreasonable post about a company he had invested in, I would laugh at him. But he would never do that. Ask Loic Le Meur. Ask Kevin Rose. Ask Shervin Pishevar. Ask Airbnb. Ask countless others. He didn’t get to where he is by being an idiot. He has gotten to where he is by being honest with his readers. Even if everyone doesn’t always agree with him, he has been honest. And he’s brought forth information that no one else has, even when it’s probably not in his best interest to do so.

AOL may be on the verge of changing all of that.

Again, none of us know for sure — including Mike — but I have a really bad feeling. In my post earlier, I wrote, “These things tend to flare up every few months, and they ultimately end up meaning nothing.” That was premature. These situations have arisen in the past — multiple times — and they always have led nowhere. But now I think this time actually may be different. Arianna Huffington is already on record as saying she’s looking for a new Editor-in-Chief to replace Mike (who technically was co-Editor along with Erick — even though the title has never meant much). And there are conflicting reports as to whether or not Mike actually works for AOL — let alone TechCrunch — anymore.

As someone who has helped build TechCrunch into what it has become, this entire situation is insulting. I can only imagine how Mike feels.

The point of my earlier post was twofold: 1) to dispel the assertions being made by The New York Times and others about our brand of reporting. 2) To provide everyone with some insight as to how TechCrunch actually works. If we have anything close to a trade secret, that’s it. The magic at TechCrunch happens because the writers have very little oversight. Instead, the emphasis is placed on hiring the right writers in the first place and putting them through a trial-by-fire to see who emerges. Those that have, my peers, are the best at what they do. And that’s why TechCrunch has soared.

Mike Arrington has enabled all of this. He brought in Heather, he brought in Erick, he brought in the rest of us. He built TechCrunch out of thin air. He’s made enemies along the way. He rubs some people the wrong way. But there is no question that the entire space is better because of what he’s built. And there’s also no question that what he’s built needs him.

Could TechCrunch survive without Mike Arrington? Probably. We’re doing so many pageviews now, and the machine is so profitable, that you can plug in other parts and it will run. But without him, it will not be the same. You might not think you’ll miss what he brings, but you will. Quite often, you never even see what he brings. But it permeates the entire site.

If AOL tries to bring in their own Editor-in-Chief to run TechCrunch, it will be a colossal fucking mistake. The old adage: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” — if AOL throws out Mike and tries to install their own despot, it will be breaking it just so they can fix it. And they might not like the end result. It may run, but it will never purr with the precision at which we purr right now.

I can’t believe this is even a possibility. But it is. And so I’m writing this at the eleventh hour to let you, our readers, know before you find out via a press release. I don’t know, maybe I’m hopeful that the collective voice of millions of loyal readers can change a company’s mind. Maybe that’s naive. But it’s worth a shot. We owe that to Mike.

AOL seems to think that by cutting off the biggest conflicts — ones so big that they’d obviously have to be disclosed — that they’ll be a bastion of integrity in the editorial landscape. What a bunch of horse shit. The conflicts we need to worry about are the ones not disclosed. They’re far more prevalent and they do actually deceive readers because they’re far more subtle. But that’s an impossible task. AOL can’t fix that — no one can. So instead they’ll slaughter the lamb everyone can see to gain puffery amongst the old media peers who also live to die another day.

It has almost been exactly one year since AOL acquired us. At the time, they promised not to interfere with the way we do things. For 11+ months, they’ve kept their word, and things have run beautifully from our end. Our business is one of the few sterling ornaments on their mantel. Now they may break their promise to us. And if that promise is broken, it will break TechCrunch.

Update From Mike: Editorial Independence

Our parent company AOL is having a rough time making money from Patch, its rapidly expanding network of local news sites, and that’s not its only problem. Today, group buying website BuyWithMe announced that it has recruited Charlie Gray, formerly Executive Vice President at Patch, as its new ‘Chief People Officer’.

BuyWithMe, which rivals the likes of Groupon and LivingSocial in the United States, says Gray will help manage the company’s growth plans, and hire, train and retain talent throughout the country.

BuyWithMe is certainly aggressive when it comes to acquiring its way into new markets. This year, it has already completed five acquisitions scooping up New York deals site Scoop St., Chicago deals siteDealADayOnline, San Francisco deals site Swoop, loyalty company Edhance, and LocalTwist.

BuyWithMe launched in 2009 and now operates in Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C.

At Patch, Gray scaled the growth from 100 employees in 30 locations to 1,400 employees in more than 800 locations in just one year, so the hire showcases BuyWithMe’s ambition for further expansion.

Previously, Gray served as Head of HR and Staffing for Google’s North American Advertising Sales department, where he oversaw all people-related functions for Google’s US and Canada sales and operations teams. He’s also worked for Ziff-Davis and RecycleBank in the past.

AOL (which, in case you didn’t know, has been the owner of TechCrunch for almost a year now) has announced that its board of directors has given the green light for a stock repurchase program that will allow the company to buy back up to $250 million of its outstanding shares of common stock from time to time over the next 12 months.

The move comes after AOL’s stock took a gigantic nosedive following the reporting of its second-quarter results.

AOL reported revenues of $542.2 million for the quarter, down 8 percent compared to Q2 2010, and a net loss of $11.8 million. The results beat analyst expectations, but investors were unhappy and sent shares to their lowest level since AOL separated from Time Warner in December 2009.

AOL also lowered its outlook for the year, which didn’t help.

A stock repurchase program lets companies buy back its own shares from the marketplace, thus reducing the number of outstanding shares, and is usually authorized when a company’s management believes the shares are undervalued or depressed. The reduction of the float means that even a company’s bottom line remains the same, its earnings per share increase.

AOL share price closed at $10.22 yesterday, down from $15.07 two days ago.

Comments Artie Minson, CFO of AOL:

“This announcement highlights both our strong balance sheet and free cash flow generation. We believe this is a unique opportunity to invest in our company.”

At June 30, 2011, AOL had $458.7 million of cash, while free cash flow was $77.2 million in Q2 2011.

Internet access, content and online advertising company AOL (which also owns TechCrunch) this morning reported its earnings for the second quarter of the year.

AOL reported a net loss of $11.8 million, compared with a year-ago loss of a little over $1 billion, which had included a major goodwill impairment charge and higher restructuring costs.

Total revenue came in at $542.2 million, down 8 percent compared to Q2 2010. Subscription revenue took another – albeit expected – hit with a 23 percent decrease.

However, advertising revenue (finally) grew 5 percent to $319 million after an essentially flat Q1 2011, notably despite the impact of AOL’s exit from certain countries and operations in recent times, with display advertising up a decent 14 percent.

Partially offsetting advertising revenue growth was a decline in search and contextual revenue of $17.6 million, the company said.

In a statement, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong says the company’s return to global advertising growth for the first time since 2008 is another ‘meaningful step forward’ in the comeback of the AOL brand.

That may well be the case, but the road to sustainable profitability is still long.

AOL highlights its Huffington Post Media Group, which saw the number of unique visitors surpass 30 million (“and The New York Times”) in May 2011, according to comScore. User comments on The Huffington Post for Q2 surpassed 12 million, and recently topped 100 million since it was started.

I’ve said this before, but working at AOL is my first experience working at a “big” company. I’ve watched, mostly with amusement, as a Dilbert cartoon has come to life around me. Some of the policies and bureaucracy are useful (I’ll think of some examples, just give me a second).

Some are hilarious (forced drinking events). Some are really annoying. For example, every couple of weeks I get an email titled “AOL Standards of Business Conduct Training” with the demand “As a new employee, you are required to complete one hour of web-based training on the Standards of Business Conduct (SBCs).” The only problem is that I need to have access to the AOL network to complete the training, and they’ve never given me access so that there’s an information barrier between me and the company.

But there’s one weird policy that really stands out. AOL is absolutely crazed about questioning employee expenses. Our CEO Heather Harde deals with the brunt of the pain involved in getting expenses approved. But I’ve dealt with my fair share, too.

Last night, for example, I was cleaning up my desk. I have an envelope I keep business expenses in. There was a hotel bill for a trip when my AOL issued credit card was turned off for the day. Some taxi expenses and a restaurant bill. I looked at them, thought about the process for turning those expenses in and then having to defend them via a phone call (Heather would probably save me from this, but there goes an hour of her time). So I did the rational thing. I shredded those receipts – around $1,500 – because it wasn’t worth the pain.

Part of this process – at least at one point if not now – was referral of expense reports out to a third party firm who would assign you a “case number” and ask you to do things like send actual boarding passes to them to defend flight expenses. Sometimes we can’t get our writers to take business trips because of how difficult it is to be reimbursed for expenses.

Then today I was talking to someone at AOL about nothing in particular, and he brought up his own troubles with expense reimbursement. I asked why the company is so crazed about it.

Enter Gregory Horton. This guy was head of HR at AOL a decade ago when the company was still part of Time Warner. His story is amazing. He apparently set up a dummy consulting corporation and was billing AOL $100,000 a month for made up work. All in all, the company lost over a million dollars to Horton, or so the story goes.

Because of Horton, AOL has for nearly a decade had draconian expense reimbursement policies.

This is one of those points of friction in a company that should be stamped out. Find and prosecute the Hortons of the world. But give your loyal employees a break. Don’t make them feel like criminals for trying to get legitimate expenses approved and paid in a timely manner. In the end, this is just a self-imposed competitive disadvantage against nimbler companies.

The dream of a personalized magazine tuned just for you keeps showing itself on the iPad. Today’s edition comes from AOL Editions, which is finally coming out after much fine-tuning and a silly video. (Disclosure: TechCrunch is also owned by AOL). Editions assembles a digital magazine for you once a day from a variety of online news sources and blogs—The Atlantic, Businessweek, CNNMoney, Forbes, TechCrunch, Cnet, Business Insider, Wired. It is trying to stake a position somewhere between The Daily’s all-original (and expensive) reporting and Flipboard‘s endless pages of prettified RSS feeds and social streams.

AOL Editions is designed to be completed in one sitting. It pulls in 30 to 50 stories across different sections like Top News, Technology, Business, Entertainment, Sports, Local News, and Travel. You pick the sections you want, enter your zipcode, and it does the rest. You can further train the app each time you read an article by tapping on sources and topics you want to follow or hide. The app pulls out a few main topic tags associated with each story for which you can effectively give a thumbs up or down by tapping on a check mark or an X. The next editions will show more stories from those sources or on those topics.  You also can add blogs or news sources via a search box on each section start page as well (but only from sources without paywalls, no New York Times articles appear, for instance).

The design and navigation are pleasing enough once you wait for a minute or so for your edition to be pulled together on the fly each morning.  Readers are greeted by a big cover picture with an old-style magazine mailing label that states their name, town, and the temperature.  Sections start off with large photos and headline typeface. As you flip through the articles, the layouts vary with headlines and excerpts in different column configurations. When you tap on a story, an in-app browser will open up and take you to the original webpage. If the source is owned by AOL (such as TechCrunch or Patch for local news), you get this nice effect that allows you to swipe through all the text within the app, but only half the page is moving because the photo and headline stay still.

In addition to flipping through the edition sequentially, you can also pull up sections to jump to them directly or a full list of articles. Articles can be bookmarked or shared via email, Twitter or Facebook.

It’s a solid effort put out by the mobile team under David Temkin and Sol Lipman from AOL’s West Coast office (which is part of Brad Garlinghouse‘s group). But I have one main issue with it and that is the timeliness of the news in its pages. For my realtime tastes, they can be a little bit stale.

In an attempt to deliver something that is complete and completable, AOL Editions pulls together your personalized stories at the same designated time every day. If that is 8:00 AM, any news that happens after that will have to wait until your next edition “arrives” the next morning (although there is a way to override that and assemble the next edition immediately). If I open AOL Editions and read what I perceive as yesterday’s or even this morning’s news compared to what I can get online, I’ll just stick to the Web.

I, admittedly, am a news junkie whose livelihood depends on being up-to-the-minute on every tech headline, but I don’t think it’s just me. People spot check news apps and sites against one another.  News apps need to be as current as the Web. Those are just table stakes.

While there is a certain satisfaction to being able to complete an Edition (or at least skim every headline and excerpt), it wouldn’t be too hard to add a few updates throughout the day to each section. The Edition could be reassembled every time I open the app, not some predetermined time of day.  The algorithm that selects what stories to present is based on clusters of similar articles across top news sources.  There is no social stream component like you have in Flipboard pulling out the images and text behind Tweeted or shared links.  The benefit of this is that Editions is less noisy than Flipboard, but it is also missing out on the timeliness of the social news feed.   Again, there is a different way to do this.  Instead of showing every shared story in my Twitter and Facebook streams, Editions could show only the ones which hit a certain threshold of likes and reteweets.

As the news-finding algorithm improves, so will the overall experience.