Smart people are talking about AOL; let's pay them back by listening.

I’m still seething and I’m reticent to blog about my feeling right now for fear I’ll say something I regret.

However, there are a lot of smart folks out there talking about us (AOL) and I’m going to highlight them here (note: I’m not going to respond to everything they are saying–I want to, but I’m in my “cool off” period right now and I’m gonna try and stick to it). I’ve been discussing what these smart people are saying about us with anyone and everyone at AOL who will listen to me. I’m thinking about planning a corporate retreat where we bring these folks in and have them just vent on us and point out all the problems we have. It would be brutal, but as they say “the truth shall make you free.” Also, the first step in sucking less, is knowing you suck.

Here are three blogs/podcasts that everyone at AOL need to listen to right now. So, drop what you’re doing and listen/read these.

1. David Strom is a very smart guy who’s been thinking and writing about software and the Internet for a couple of decades. He has a great blog post about AOL software on his blog. It’s a very harsh post from a very smart person–he has some great points.
2. Molly Wood, Veronica Belmont, and Tom Merrit do a great podcast that I listen to every single day at CNET called Buzz Outloud. They also have a great conversation about AOL software. They are also very harsh on AOL–but again, these are very smart people. Everyone at AOL should stop what they’re doing right now (tell your boss I said it’s OK), and listen to this podcast. At 3:46 in they are talking about how great it is that we are giving away free anti-virus software (we’re the first major company to do it). They are so excited about it UNTIL they bring up the recent privacy issues with AOL and the ability to uninstall our software. They say: “if you’ve ever installed AIM you know how hard it is to get rid of” and “it gets it clutches deep within your computer–is this antivirus gonna be the same way?”
3. Danny Sullivan is a brilliant guy and he does an amazing podcast called the Daily SearchCast. I listen to it every single day. He did a special edition yesterday where he interviews Eric Schmidt and asks him about my proposal for search engines to not keep search data (7:45 in).