Ho-Po.AOL

AOL Dons the Lavender

Out here in hinterlands, some older women refused to wear lavender.

My grandmother seemed impervious to the trend and she looked good in lavender. Her long white hair, usually worn in a bun, was an accent to the lavender and white dresses. As a youth, I never thought my grandmother was anything but great. Isn’t that the way it should be, grandmothers are the best for food, hugs, kisses and treats.

“Okay, so how does his grandmother get into a discussion on AOL?”

Simple my shortsighted friend. “Ofttimes, they buried old women in lavender.”

And we arrive at AOL on death’s door.

How else can one describe putting an individual as toxic as Huffington in charge of their news operation. That is about as wise as putting dogmeister Vick in charge of an animal shelter.

“Cruel?”

I think not. The man deserves being shamed at every turn. And AOL deserves ridicule at every turn. In their infinite wisdom Time Warner/AOL placed AOL head Steve Case in charge after the merger. Yes, AOL bought Time Warner, but honchos at TW including Ted Turner could have said no.

From that mega-merger people expected AOL to rule the world. Those in the know, expected the result- a disaster. AOL was a gateway, nothing more. And it was a high priced gateway. By the time AOL purchased TW, Netscape had neutered them.

I remember asking my son, whose law firm sat in on the merger, “what is that all about?”

Nothing about the merger made sense, least of all Steve Case. He was an internet guy who then headed a giant publishing industry. AOL was at that stage had imaginary potential. TW was in the real world, books, movies, and stuff which could be sold and re-sold. Pretending to be relevant is far different than showing up everyday and running a giant corporation.

Case may be a nice guy, but he was not the man for the job at the head of TW. They may have called it AOL/TW but all the nuts and bolts were on the publishing side not the digital side. For those who believe I am harsh, remember the Dot Com bubble? The biggest bubble was AOL.

Today AOL’s relevance factor hits around the same level as Trillian. In fact they might clock in below Trillian. At least Trillian will aggregate my social media, my email, and my chat in one place without all the crap which AOL and sites like Yahoo put in my way.

HuffPo ranks somewhere around the usefulness of wart for most. I believe in the 2,000 posts on this site, I have referred to HuffPo once, maybe twice. The article I remember was to post quotes on George Soros, who is a demi-god on HuffPo.

Don’t bother to call me for the funeral. I’ll be busy with my Digsby tracking the hundreds of tweets, emails and information I get from the real world all day, every day. We might be thankful for one thing- they’ve freed up one address. Those who like their toxicity wrapped in mindless clutter will feel warm and fuzzy all day on AOLLavender.com.