AOL takes a hit in DC

Last year the local AOL community, which has been such a large cornerstone of the technology companies on the Dulles Corridor, took a hit when the company announced it was moving their headquarters to New York.  It was a pretty huge blow to the local area in may ways.  But things seemed to settle out.

This week however, the local AOL’ers got some more bad news.  According to this article in the Washington Post, AOL announced the following:

AOL is slashing more products — including some that had been promoted as on the cutting edge of the company’s future — as part of its effort to cut costs and focus resources on what is working for the beleaguered Internet giant.

AOL said they are canceling several products in a cost saving move.  On the cut list are Bluestring, AOL Pictures, and Xdrive. Apparently these products have not gained enough momentum in the marketplace and pressure form Time Warner, AOL’s parent company, to cut costs have played a role in the moves.

Last year we had a post about the move to NY and it’a impact on the local area.  While it was true that the most visible of the losses were jobs form the local tech sector, another big hit was the local arts and other charities that AOL donated heavily to.

On a side note however, I have seen many many ex AOL’ers involved in the local startup community and contributing to the cool atmosphere growing here in DC.  The Loladex guys, Laurence and Dan both came from AOL.  And I also believe that the founders of Summize, who just recently got bought by Twitter were also former AOL employees.  So while these cuts are bad for what one may call “the old internet” they can and most times do move on to help the “new social media” and startup communities here in DC.

Searchles signs on with Washington Post

Searchles, the local DC startup that provides “social search, has made another big step.  Recently we reported that they received a $300k round of funding, bringing their total up to the $2 million mark.
Mashable is reporting that they have signed a deal with the Washington Post and their newsreaders social network called MyPost.  What Searchles is bring to the table is

Now, when browsing the profiles of other MyPost members, you will see Searchles’ “Related Users” widget, which shows you other people who have taken an interest in similar stories on washingtonpost.com, based primarily on comments.

This seems like a pretty interesting idea.  As we all know, old media is struggling with way to stay relevant in todays climate and I think the Post has been doing well to stay ahead of the curve.  This is another good step for them, especially since it is two local companies and would seem to be a good fit.  A look over at the offical Searchle’s blog gives us a little more insight into the deal.

The widget is part of our Searchles Discovery® technology - geared towards online publishers, bloggers, and social networking sites and priced based on set up fee and a revenue-share working scenario. Social Discovery tools offer a set of customizable solutions for boosting site-engagement, realizing full value of site content by using it as a foundation to build and utilize networks of trusted peers, as well as enhancing social search features and capabilities for targeted advertising.

In addition to the widget, a ‘searchle it!‘ bookmarklet will be added to teh Post stories, with the hope of getting more good content pushed to the Searchle user base.

It will be interesting to follow this deal and see how the integration works to help both companies.

Mixx Doubles Down Today

Well Mixx hit a pretty cool exacta today on the news front, both traditional and new media. I woke this morning and saw a tweet form the Mixx twitter account that they were featured in the Washington Post today in an article by Mike Musgrove.  And then this afternoon they hit Techcrunch in a post by Erick Schonfeld.  That’s a pretty good double feature, wouldn’t you say ?

The Post article was a nice feature of Mixx and the qualities that make them stand out from their compeition in the space.  While the service is similar to Digg and Reddit, Mixx offers

But Mixx users are encouraged to start an account and configure a start page with news topics of their choice. Users can pick subjects, or “tags,” from “Alzheimer’s” to “Star Wars.” If a tag doesn’t exist, they can start a news group with a few clicks. Group creators can determine whether they are public or invite-only.

Mixx’s partner news sites such as CNN feature a Mixx button next to their articles. Mixx users can click the button, tag the story and share it with other Mixx readers.

The post touches on the fact that while Digg is much larger in terms of page views, Mixx is building a loyal following of its own and is one to keep an eye on.

The Techcrunch post focused on the major increase in Mixx traffic since partnering with CNN.

Consequently, the number of unique visitors to Mixx more than doubled from 380,000 in April to 904,000 in May.

To put that into perspective, only 2.4 million people have ever visited Mixx since it launched in September, 2007. In other words, more than a third of all the people who have ever gone to Mixx, went there last month.

That is awesome numbers and looks as though Mixx’s partnerships with some major media outlets is finally paying off.  They made a similar deal recently with the LA Times to place Mixx buttons on the stories on the respective sites.

It is awesome to see a local startup get some good coverage, especially from the local Washington Post.  We can only hope the team over there continue to innovate and build great features and partnerships that will bring in new loyal users to the Mixx family.

Great job guys.