It has been reported that due to low performance and high running costs, AOL is to close down XDrive, Bluestring, AOL Pictures and MyMobile.
The online storage service XDrive was bought by AOL three years ago, for a rumoured price of $30million, whilst sources say they’re now trying to sell it for $5million! EVP of AOL, Kevin Conroy, said that consumer storage had not been as successful as they’d hoped, whilst so many social networking sites already have it integrated within them, providing a more effective business growth. For example, Bebo users upload 3 million photos a day, why would they need another online storage facility? (below quote taken from TechCrunch)
“To effectively grow the XDrive online storage business we would need to focus on subscription revenues vs. monetizing through advertising revenue, and this business model is not in strategic alignment with our company’s goals. We are exploring plans to migrate our users assets to ensure the best possible transition experience.”
Other purse tightening at AOL sees the AOL Video Portal being merged with AOL Programming Video Experiences, to be completed by Q4. It is hoped that this merger will help increase ad revenue between the sites. Reports on PaidContent also show that some blogs from Weblogs Inc have been suspended until 31st July, with DIY Life likely to be cancelled full time. You can expect a backlash from the bloggers, along with a negative response from their loyal fanbase. What kind of long term effects will this low-end cost cutting have?
Do these trimmings suggest AOL is trying to shape up for a buyout? Last month it was rumoured that a deal could be on the cards with Microsoft, is this still the case? It’ll be interesting to see who else comes sniffing around over the coming months.
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July 29th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
I have been trying to access the service for the last 24 hours to remove / get access to the stuff I have stored on xDrive but my username and password is been rejected.
I know I am using the correct creds. I have it written down. Is the service already dead? I hope not since I have some very important stuff I want now!
Even their “I forgot my password” service does not seem to work. It claims it sent my password to my email but it did not.