The Web 2.0 Summit has been providing a lot of highlights. First Microsoft’s announcement of Twitter Search, then Google’s Sergey Brin’s comments on Yahoo “abdicating search” and now AOL CEO Tim Armstrong is hinting that a big announcement might be on the way.
“We have been working on something for the last three months that I think is a fairly substantial shift in our technology,” he said. “When that’s ready to announce, maybe we’ll come back and talk to you about it.”
Rather than a search announcement, it sounds like it might have more to do with the framework that powers AOL’s network of blogs and content properties.
“It’s a broader platform with more information around content and the creation of content,” he said. “We see that platform evolving to a much higher scale.”
Armstrong also noted that AOL has recently increased its roster of journalists from 500 to over 3,000, and that over 3,000 pieces of content are posted every day to AOL properties. It’s also now creating 3-4 times as much video as it was several months ago.
Personally, I would like to see something innovative come out of the AOL camp. We’ve all heard about the financial debacle that was the Time Warner+AOL partnership. It will be interesting to see how the two parties benefit from such a financial investment.
As Armstrong said, “If you’re not going to take risks and you don’t think the future is bright the Internet is probably not the right place for you.”
