Brand

America Online continues to tighten its belt with the announcement of its discontinuing the services of AOL Pictures, BlueString, and XDrive.  AOL will begin notifying customers next week.  AOL had discontinued AOL journals and AOL Hometown earlier this summer.

All three products will go offline in December, however, AOL customers that have photos on AOL pictures will be able to access them until June 2009.

The company is clearly looking to shave budgets by eliminating money losing products.

With the closing of some of its more interesting social media apps, the current economic climate, and Yahoo’s 64 percent drop in profits and 10% cut in workforce, the rumor mill is active again about a possible AOL-YAHOO merger….

Cone release today the 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study Fact Sheet.  The survey presents the findings of an online survey managed by Opinion research corporation across 1, 092 adults comprising of 525 men and 565 Women 18 years of ager and older.

Social Media was defined as : Technology facilitated dialogue among individuals or groups, such as blogs/microblogs, forums, wikis, content sharing, social networking, social bookmarking and social gaming.

Among the findings were approximately 59% of Americans have interacted with companies on a social media website over a years time.  59% ? Wow, that seems like an awfully high number, which begs the question, what exactly defines “interacting” with a company or brand on a social media website?  Are people really reporting “interaction” with a company or is this really a reflection on actually visits to social media sites.  I would also have liked to have seen a breakdown in age groups.  Was the population size skewed to 18-30 year olds?  Are the baby boomers and seniors now interacting at a higher rate than last year?

In the study, it reports:

• 13% – Interact 2 or more times a week
• 12% – Interact Once a week
• 13% – Interact 1-2 times a month
• 21% – Interact a few times a year