DENVER (AP) — MapQuest was long the leader among websites giving people online directions, but Google Maps surpassed it in 2008. MapQuest wants those eyeballs back. Starting Tuesday, the Denver-based mapping unit of AOL Inc. is testing a fresh look with features that some might say make it look a whole lot more like – Google Maps. The beta version scraps MapQuest’s squiggly red logo in “cheap hotel” font for a simple non-serif font in shades of green and blue. Instead of scrolling down to see a map, visitors see a map right away on the right side of the screen, just like at Google Maps. There’s also a single box for typing in searches instead of several. The beta version makes it easier to ask for directions not just from point A to B, but also points C and D. Users can reorder their directional points by clicking and dragging on icons to get directions from point A to B to C, or from A to C to B. Once a route is mapped out, a toolbar at the top of the map allows you to search for shops, parks, gas stations or other spots along the way. “It’s allowing it to be a place of discovery, rather than just a calculator,” said MapQuest’s general manager Christian Dwyer, who likened the new version to a “digital concierge.” It’s meant to be a simpler, more elegant, faster, more intuitive version that offers more information to plan a trip, Dwyer said. If all goes well, the beta could be the default look of MapQuest in August, though users can still opt to use the older version. True to parent company AOL’s mission to provide original content to attract traffic, MapQuest’s beta version links search results for particular hotel and restaurant addresses, for example, to websites or content about those addresses. Boosting traffic is critical for AOL. AOL’s revenue in the first three months of the year was down 23 percent from a year ago to $664.3 million, while rivals Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. reported increases. In the online mapping category, Google Maps is the most popular with about 63.3 million unique visitors in May, followed by MapQuest with about 49.1 million unique visitors, according to figures from comScore Inc. Yahoo Maps and Bing Maps follow. Among the 33.5 million people looking up directions on mobile devices, MapQuest captures about 8.5 million of them, according to comScore’s MobiLens service. Part of Google’s catapulting over MapQuest may be due to links to Google Maps often appearing at the top of search results for locations. In fact, a Google search for “MapQuest” pulls up a link to MapQuest.com, right next to a map of its Denver headquarters provided not by MapQuest but by Google Maps. The average MapQuest user comes to the site about twice a month, Dwyer said. He would like to see their return visits double. “Moving the frequency needle, that would be the ultimate goal. And getting new users,” Dwyer said. — Online: http://www.mapquest.com ? 2010 The Associated Press . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use .
June 29, 2010 | Posted in
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The struggling Internet company AOL plans to sell or shut down social Web site Bebo, which it bought for $850 million nearly two years ago. In an e-mail sent to AOL Inc. employees Tuesday, the company said that Bebo’s audience is falling and that it would need a “significant investment” to remain competitive as a social networking company. Bebo has been popular in Europe, but not in the U.S. According to comScore Inc., it had 5.1 million U.S. users in February, compared with 209.7 million for Facebook. AOL says it’s looking for potential buyers and plans to finish a strategic evaluation by the end of May. AOL bought Bebo in May 2008. AOL was then part of Time Warner Inc. It separated from the media conglomerate last year.
April 6, 2010 | Posted in
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NEW YORK (AP) — Getting people to pay for news online at this point would be “like trying to force butterflies back into their cocoons,” a new consumer survey suggests. That was one of several bleak headlines in the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s annual assessment of the state of the news industry, released Sunday. The project’s report contained an extensive look at habits of the estimated six in 10 Americans who say they get at least some news online during a typical day. On average, each person spends three minutes and four seconds per visit to a news site. About 35 percent of online news consumers said they have a favorite site that they check each day. The others are essentially free agents, the project said. Even among those who have their favorites, only 19 percent said they would be willing to pay for news online – including those who already do. There’s little brand loyalty: 82 percent of people with preferred news sites said they’d look elsewhere if their favorites start demanding payment. “If we move to some pay system, that shift is going to have to surmount significant consumer resistance,” said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the project, part of the Pew Research Center. Last year, online advertising saw its first decline since 2002, according to the research firm eMarketer. Four of five Americans surveyed told the project that they never or hardly ever click on ads. Despite a lot of choices, traffic on news sites tends to be concentrated on the biggest – Yahoo, MSNBC, CNN, AOL and The New York Times. “There was this view that we’re retreating into our own world of niche sites and that’s not true,” Rosenstiel said. That offers a glimmer of hope for establishing a pay system if operators of the biggest sites could somehow agree on how to do it, he said. The survey found that if forced to make a choice, consumers prefer some kind of subscription service to a pay-as-you-go plan. The Wall Street Journal requires readers to pay for content and The New York Times recently announced plans to charge for full access to its Web site. Starting next year under a metered system, Times readers will be allowed to click on a certain number of stories for free each month, with fees kicking in for readers who exceed that level. In addition to attempts to reach back and charge readers for content they have become accustomed to getting for free, news executives hope that advances in technology and changes in consumer habits will provide future revenue opportunities. The Associated Press last month announced a new business unit, AP Gateway, designed to develop and promote products that will help the cooperative, newspapers and broadcasters create revenue-producing products. The AP, for instance, will charge for an application it is developing for use on the iPad, Apple’s tablet computer. While consumers may seem reluctant to pay for news, they’re more likely to pay for the functionality of news products on various devices, including smart phones, said Jane Seagrave, senior vice president and chief revenue officer at The Associated Press. “I’m more hopeful now than I ever have been,” Seagrave said. “There seems to be a broad understanding that there is a value to professional journalism that is at risk right now.” Pew’s survey also noted how news habits are changing rapidly. Blogging is declining in frequency, one quarter of Americans now say they get some news on their mobile phones and people are looking for news more frequently on social Web sites, the survey found. For the online survey, the project interviewed 2,259 people from Dec. 28, 2009, to Jan. 19, 2010. The margin of error is plus or minus five percentage points. Beyond the online activity, the study found that cable news, led by Fox News Channel, seemed to be the only sector of the news industry thriving. Newspaper advertising revenue fell 26 percent in 2009 compared to the year before, the study said. Local TV and radio ad revenue were both off 22 percent. Network television ad revenue was down 8 percent. Network news division resources are down more than half since the late 1980s, and that doesn’t count ABC News’ recent announcement that it could lose as much as a quarter of its staff due to cutbacks. Newspaper spending on reporting and editing has fallen roughly 30 percent over the past decade, probably more at many big-city dailies, Rosenstiel said. — On the Net: http://www.journalism.org
March 15, 2010 | Posted in
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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) — Google Inc. is adding a bike lane with its latest online mapping option. The new bicycling directions available on Google Maps starting Wednesday supplement the guidance already provided to motorists and pedestrians. The biking directions initially will be available only for the United States. Google spent the past six months tweaking its mapping service so it could recommend routes that would steer bicyclists away from big hills and heavily congested streets. The feature can be used to pinpoint bicycling trails in more than 150 cities. Bike directions already have been available on some smaller Web sites, but Google is the first major Internet mapping service provider to add the option. Google’s mapping service already is the most popular in the U.S., with more than 55 million visitors in February, according to comScore. MapQuest, owned by AOL Inc., ranked second with more than 36 million visitors.
March 10, 2010 | Posted in
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — As part of an ongoing effort to improve its user experience, Internet company AOL Inc. is letting users of its AIM instant-messaging service chat with friends on Facebook. AOL said Wednesday that a new version of AIM connects with the instant-messaging function on Facebook’s Web site, letting AIM users communicate with friends who are logged on to the social network and available to chat. Once an AIM user downloads the new software and links it with their Facebook profile, their buddy list will include a list of online Facebook friends. Excluding mobile, AIM has about 17 million users – a fraction of the more than 400 million on Facebook. It launched a “lifestreaming” feature last year that let users see friends’ latest posts on social sites like Facebook and Twitter.
February 10, 2010 | Posted in
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Internet company IAC/InterActiveCorp lost $1 billion in the fourth quarter because it wrote down the value of its search business, but the results beat expectations and offered the latest indication that the online advertising market is improving. IAC’s shares jumped 4.7 percent in premarket trading. IAC, which is run by media billionaire Barry Diller, said Tuesday its net loss amounted to $7.94 per share in the last three months of the year. This compares with a net profit of $227.4 million, or $1.57 per share, in the year-ago quarter. In the most recent quarter IAC took a $991.9 million impairment charge to account for decreased projections for revenue and profit growth at IAC’s search properties, which include such Web sites as Ask.com and Dictionary.com. Excluding one-time items, the company earned 20 cents per share – 2 cents more than analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected. Revenue climbed 5 percent to $367.2 million, beating analyst expectations for $339.6 million. Even as IAC wrote down the value of its search business, overall the company appeared to be reversing some downward trends. Revenue from IAC’s core search business, which includes the Ask search engine and online city guide Citysearch and makes money from ads, rose 3 percent to $185.4 million. Revenue had dropped in the first nine months of the year. The turnaround is consistent with recent results from IAC’s peers that signal that the online advertising market is improving. Online ad leader Google Inc. reported fourth-quarter ad revenue grew 17 percent. Yahoo Inc. reported a 4 percent drop and AOL Inc. an 8 percent drop, but those declines were less than those logged during the first three quarters of the year. Revenue from IAC’s media and other business, which includes entertainment site CollegeHumor and online retailer ShoeBuy.com, climbed 6 percent to $63.5 million. IAC said the unit benefited from healthy holiday sales. In IAC’s Match business, which consists of dating sites like Match.com and Chemistry.com, revenue dropped 6 percent to $83.3 million. IAC said the decline was due to absence of Match Europe, which was sold last June. Match’s number of paid subscribers rose 3 percent from a year earlier to 1.4 million. For the full year, IAC reported a loss of $978.8 million, or $7.06 per share, compared with a loss of $156.2 million, or $1.08 per share, in 2008. Revenue declined 5 percent to $1.38 billion in 2009, from $1.45 billion a year earlier. IAC shares rose 99 cents to $21.16 in premarket trading.
February 9, 2010 | Posted in
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — AOL Inc. CEO Tim Armstrong has turned down a bonus of at least $1.5 million in 2009, the company reported in a filing Tuesday. In the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Internet company said Armstrong was entitled to the bonus but the company’s compensation committee accepted his request to forego it last week. AOL, which separated from media conglomerate Time Warner Inc. in December and began trading once again as a stand-alone company, is slated to report its fourth-quarter results on Wednesday. AOL, which is based in New York, rose to fame in the 1990s with its legacy dial-up Internet access business, and bought Time Warner at the height of the dot-com boom in 2001. That corporate union didn’t work out, though, and AOL’s main business began to decline after peaking in 2002 – hurt by the rise of speedier broadband Internet connections. For the past several years, AOL has been trying to reinvent itself as a content and advertising company. This has been difficult, though, as its advertising revenue has not been able to offset the drop in dial-up revenue.
February 3, 2010 | Posted in
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NEW YORK (AP) — Media conglomerate Time Warner Inc. says it reversed its losses in the fourth quarter, as its cable channels and movie studio boosted revenue. The company, which has shed both AOL and Time Warner Cable in the past year, is also raising its dividend 13 percent and increasing its stock repurchase plan. Time Warner, which owns the Warner Bros. movie studio, Time Inc. magazines and the HBO and Turner cable networks, says it earned $627 million, or 53 cents per share. That compares with a loss of $16 billion, or $13.41 per share, a year ago when the company was hurt by heavy charges. Revenue climbed 2 percent to $7.32 billion.
February 3, 2010 | Posted in
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SAN FRANCISCO — A research organization that tries to warn computer users about programs that do sneaky things on their computers has spun off from Harvard University. StopBadware says it will operate as a standalone nonprofit with funding from Google Inc., eBay Inc.’s PayPal and Mozilla, which makes the Firefox Web browser. It was initially set up as part of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. StopBadware issues what it calls “badware alerts” about corporations whose applications do what the organization deems unwanted and harmful things to users’ computers. For instance, it once put AOL on its badware list because downloads of the AOL program automatically came with other software the group said consumers don’t necessarily need or want. The organization also targets purveyors of spyware and other forms of malicious software. The idea is to warn users before they access a site with such a program. The Firefox browser, for instance, has used the StopBadware list to power some of its built-in security tools. The list also is meant to pressure companies to change their tactics. The group, based Cambridge, Mass., said it decided to break off from Harvard because it had grown beyond its roots as a research project. “There is still much to do,” executive director Maxim Weinstein said. “Badware remains a growing problem, but in the past few years, there’s also been a growing sense that this is a problem we – the Internet community – can and should work together to address.” — On The Net: http://stopbadware.org
January 26, 2010 | Posted in
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