I'm a person who likes to tackle challenges. Google was a challenge when I got there. I think AOL's a challenge. The way we run the company is a very team-focused environment.
Tim Armstrong
Anytime you make big plans, you have people questioning what you're doing.
A picture of me as this super affable sales guy gets painted, but in actuality, I'm pretty driven by hard work and love working with teams. What people discount is, I grew up in a very small blue-collar town in Massachusetts and have basically scrapped my way career wise.
I'm used to being in creative environments where people throw out a lot of ideas.
We have people who pay to use our products and services, and they are heavily engaged in our content. If you erase the brand perceptions of AOL, and consider that people pay to use our properties, you would probably consider this one of the most valuable audiences on the Internet.
The reality is, I've started multiple companies, so actually I'm probably more of a product/creative person than I am sales. Although I can do both.
Bebo has an opportunity to prove its products and services. Bebo plays in a very competitive space; it has big market share in specific countries. An AIM profile vs. a Bebo profile are very different experiences.
I think international is a place that, actually, The Huffington Post and AOL have started to make moves in.
One of AOL's biggest assets is its brand. For people over 30 and, due to AOL Instant Messenger, even a lot of people under 30, AOL was their first real interaction with technology in a positive way.
I think, from a standpoint of editorial, you know, AOL historically has played in a very deep way across many different verticals in the content space. Huffington Post adds a very large new dimension to that.
I think if the average person that uses AOL can't physically see the changes in the company, we've failed.
A big part of fixing AOL is getting AOL to believe in itself.
Think of any news site on the web that sells subscriptions; AOL has four times as many people as the largest subscription service. We have people who pay to use our products and services, and they are heavily engaged in our content.
What's happening internally is eventually what will take AOL back to being a growth company.
AOL, I think, represented an opportunity for a few things. One is I'm a big believer in the AOL brand, and I think AOL as a brand has touched hundreds of millions of people around the world. Reigniting that brand is a very exciting challenge and a big opportunity.
I'm a massive believer in brands. Silicon Valley has tried to reprogram everybody to think brands aren't valuable. Or theirs are, but yours aren't.
The No. 1 criticism most managers get is that they don't ever change or wait too long to make changes... It's very simple: Either things are performing or they're not. And if it's not performing, we have to make changes.
Until the company believes in itself, AOL didn't have its own space and identity in the marketplace. The opportunity is to get out from under the negative history and figure out the value AOL offers for consumers and for publishers and advertisers.
