Circle me on Google+Basically, there [were] two ways to do it: get the product perfect in one market or go for a land grab approach. They went all in before they perfected the product and, in retrospect, that wasn’t ideal."
— The original sin of Patch, according to an anonymous former AOL executive directly involved in the company’s strategy (via Fortune Tech)
That’s what NYU’s Jay Rosen hears:
What I heard about Patch: Freelance budgets mostly gone. Editors told to move to the HuffPost model. More re-purposing of news across sites.
— Jay Rosen(@jayrosen_nyu) February 2, 2012
We believe the current market price of AOL fails to reflect the substantial value of the sum-of-its-parts. Shareholders have clearly given up hope that the massive investment in the Display business, and most dramatically in Patch, will generate an acceptable return on investment."
— Investment firm Starboard Value LP, in a letter to CEO and Board of Directors of AOL.
Like USA Today selling its data, POLITICO making a bookstore, my local public radio station selling membership or TechCrunch launching Disrupt. Publishers that successfully turn their content into brand building and marketing for a product are the ones that are surviving. It’s the real reason Patch is having so much trouble: they’re selling nothing but pageviews and sunshine."
— Sean Blanda, The inevitable collision of journalism and everything else
