AOL's Garden Walls Start To Come Down

from the well,-look-at-that... dept

There's been a lot of talk lately concerning fears that the internet was going to move back towards "Walled Gardens" where content was locked up behind certain barriers. One of the leading proponents of this strategy has been AOL, who had been claiming that their major strategic shift last year was to hold back more content for users (such as locking up content from popular magazines like Business 2.0 and Fortune). Well, now it seems that they've had a second "major strategic shift" back in the other direction. A bit fitting that this comes the same day that Yahoo's profits soar due to advertising revenue: AOL has decided to unlock portions of their walled up content in the hopes that they can capitalize on the new online advertising craze. They're realizing that not only does the walled garden strategy not work in attracting new users, it hasn't even helped them keep old users.

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