AOL Gets Out Of User Generated Video Business
AOL is on a product-cutting spree. In addition to the shuttering of XDrive, AOL Pictures, MyMobile And Bluestring, the company will also be shutting down the AOL Video Uploads service starting this week. — Users must move their videos prior …
Context & Ripple Effects
AOL's July notice that it would close XDrive, AOL Pictures, MyMobile and Bluestring established a broader retrenchment from consumer storage and sharing products. Ending the upload service extends that pruning to a video feature, rather than treating video as an exception.
First-order effects
- AOL Video Uploads users must move their videos before the service closes, losing AOL as a place to host and share uploads.
- AOL removes another user-generated-content product from its consumer portfolio alongside XDrive, AOL Pictures, MyMobile and Bluestring.
Second-order effects
- Users affected across AOL's discontinued storage, photo, mobile and video services must shift their files and sharing activity to other providers, raising the cost of maintaining an AOL-centered media library.
- AOL's remaining product teams inherit a narrower set of consumer services to support as the company stops operating several standalone hosting and sharing tools.
Third-order effects
- The coordinated closures point toward a leaner AOL product portfolio in which standalone user-content utilities are less central than services the company elects to keep operating.
The trend: AOL is consolidating its consumer offering by cutting separate storage, photo, mobile and video-sharing services rather than maintaining a broad set of user-content destinations.