Tim Armstrong Leaves Google to Innovate AOL
Breaking: The portal days are a-changing … again. Tim Armstrong, President of Google Sales, is now Chairman and CEO of AOL, a Time Warner company. With some younger and less traditional (cable) media blood. Borrowing from the Google thinkbank, Jeffrey Bewkes from Time Warner is trying to reconstitute AOL with fresh leadership. Definitely a “New Medici,” Armstrong is supremely ad/sales based, so it will be interesting to watch what level of new product definition comes out of Google – versus reviving its search (currently Googlized). As Google’s former president of the Americas operations and senior vice president, overseeing North and Latin America – and an investor/former chairman of Associated Content, Patch.com and FitPlanet, Armstrong has to redefine what AOL means to a marketplace of users looking for fresh content and ads. Can he reinvent advertising like Google reinvented search? Read more >>
The Blogfire of the Vanities
If Sherman McCoy (think Tom Hanks in the disastrous feature) was a “Master of the Universe” – who would that “Master” be in the blog world? Would it be a Nick Denton, Arianna Huffington, Michael Arrington, Om Malik, Henry Blodget or another? While The Bonfire of the Vanities was a bestseller for its generation, a “Blogfire” could be interpreted as the next generation – or “New Medici” – of innovative publishers who challenge mainstream media newspapers, magazines, tabloids and even television market share. Read more >>