Goodbye AOL Journals, Hello Blogger!
Posted 2 months, 3 weeks ago at 12:53 AM. 0 comments
Posted in AOL, AOL Journals.
AOL Journals has finally called it quits after 5 years. Through the years it went through a few rough spots, but managed to create a small dedicated user base whom enjoyed networking with their peers. On October 31st, 2008, AOL Journals will cease to exist. Leaving many of it’s dedicated following frustrated over it’s demise.
Migrate to Blogger
The next step for AOL Journals users is to migrate their account to Blogger. Interestingly, AOL has teamed up with Google to create a transfer tool to ease the process for you. Though, after you migrate your blog, I recommend exporting it to another platfom. If you need help on the import process, visit Blogger Help AOL Import.
A Brief History
When AOL Journals initially launched, it felt as though it was a replacement for AOL Hometown. AOL Hometown was a basic website generator, but was very limited, and used an overly annoying Java script application to run it. Instead of using AOL Hometown to describe oneself, AOL Journals was meant to serve as a blogging outlet for all members. AOL Journals could not manage gain much popularity among the main user base. This could be because it due to lack of advertising, for one there were no AOL Journals tabs in AOL Profiles, one of the highly viewed features on AOL.
To generate some buzz, The The Magic Smoke began as a blog that would feature other bloggers and provide up to date information regarding features, bugs, and outages. This blog expanded further on community development, and lead to the creation of CoMET, which served as a guide for new and old AOL members.
Even AOL’s own developers joined the AOL Journals platform, where we could get a behind the scenes look on what to expect. Among the years AOL Jounals added some new features including tagging support, RSS feeds, and integration of “whitelisted” embeddable content such as Flickr slideshows.
Limited Features: A Brief History Part 2
Even with such features AOL Journals just could not gain a large grasp on AOL members. Sure many started their own journal, but abandoned it usually after the first post. The lack of customization was a huge deterrence. Though some customization through CSS was planned, it never really saw the light of day. Later on, even AOL’s own development and community teams moved outside of AOL Journals and started their own websites. After AOL acquired BlogSmith, all major blogs began utilizing this platform.
Whats next in store for AOL?
Well all I can really speculate is Bebo. AOL did acquire them and we have yet to see what they are planning to do with it. We do know they will integrate AIM Profiles in some form. In addition, Bebo also has its own blogging platform.
