AOL Begins Unplugging Services to Cut Costs

October 28, 2008 By Geoff Duncan

AOL Begins Unplugging Services to Cut Costs

AOL will soon begin informing customers its BlueString, Xdrive, and AOL Pictures services will follow AOL Hometown and AOL Journals into the dustbin.

Technology companies are facing the same financial woes as every other sector of the economy, and certainly aren’t immune to cost-cutting and belt-tightening in efforts to keep afloat. Following reports in July, Last month, former online titan AOL announced it would be closing the doors on its little-used AOL Journals and AOL Hometown services; soon, it will begin informing customers that its Xdrive, AOL Pictures, and BlueString services will be going dark.

BlueString is a multimedia sharing and composition service, while Xdrive offers network-based storage and AOL Pictures offers online photo sharing.

According to sources within the company has well as a growing number of media reports, AOL plans to shutter the services in December. Users of all three services will be able to order DVDs with their files and content; users will also be able to pull their content down via the Internet. In the case of AOL Pictures, AOL has apparently struck a deal that will enable users to transfer their online photos to American Greetings’ PhotoWorks.

Two of the three services represent acquisitions AOL made in efforts to diversify its online offerings while transitioning from a closed-garden online service to a selection of free, ad-supported offerings: AOL bought Xdrive back in 2005, and acquired BlueString in 2007. AOL Pictures evolved from AOL’s original members-only You’ve Got Pictures service in late 2005.

Showing 3 comments

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Timothy at 1:04pm 18th November 2008 I had a AOL-based web site that was rather highly ranked on Google. It had a good PageRank, so I could use it to give my newer sites a bit of a boost. Alas, AOL decided to pull the plug on me. That site had been there for over 10 years ... then pow.

After a decade of satisfied hosting on AOL, I will be moving to a cheaper, more versatile service. Ah, well.
Tony Casillo at 8:29pm 13th November 2008 Like so many others, I had my web site on AOL Hometown too. Mine was on since May, 1996. I've been a paying member since 1995. When AOL went free, I continued to pay. I thought that, since I was receiving a derived benefit from my website being hosted on AOL, it was only fair that I should put something back into the pot. Stupid ME!!!! Well, I did get the AOL email notifying me about the shutdown and I retrieved my files before the power went off. But the search engine positioning & links to the site are gone forever. My new URL is http://www.typewriterdepot.com and is hosted by a more reliable company than AOL. I will start all over again.

My parting comments to the AOL staff that made this decision are, how dumb can you get? Why walk away from this business when you can charge for the service? Or sell it if you don't want it. Are you in some sort of self-destruct mode? Are you actually getting paid to make these decisions? I am sure that folks would have paid for this valuable service. It's no surprise to me that AOL is in the pickle it's in these days. THIS WAS THE DUMBEST DECISION I'VE SEEN MADE IN A LONG TIME. I don't know who's steering this ship but it's sad.

Amen.