Jon Brod, the CEO of AOL’s local content website Patch.com, is stepping down. He will be replaced by Patch.com COO and president Steve Kalin. Brod is going to run AOL Ventures going forward. AOL Ventures is AOL’s venture capital arm. Patch.com is also laying off less than 3% of their 1,400 employee count. Several parts of Patch.com will also be consolidated. The company’s is restructuring their regional teams from 20 to 9.
Bebo used to be one of the largest social networks back in 2008. AOL acquired Bebo in March 2008 for $850 million in cash. AOL sold Bebo to Criterion Capital and several other investors in June 2010. Some of the minority shareholders in Bebo include co-founder Michael Birch, SV Angel, and Hecker Consultancy. Bebo has filed a voluntary petition for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in the Central District of California, according to the Chapter 11 Cases blog.
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Media company AOL reported their first quarter financials today. AOL’s revenues hit $538 million for the quarter, which is up from the same quarter one year earlier. Net income increased 23% to $26 million. The growth is largely due to increasing advertising revenue. Total ad revenue grew to $359 million, up from $330 million in the same quarter one year earlier. Global display ads increased 8% to $140 million.
About.me is a website where users can create a landing page profile with a large background image and links to their social media profiles. The founders of About.me, including Tony Conrad, bought the company back from AOL for around $5.7 million three years after the acquisition took place. Today About.me announced that they have acquired Wefollow.
Yesterday we wrote about how Yahoo! is launching 6 new original web shows. Now AOL is launching 15 of their own original web programs. Some of the celebrities involved in AOL’s original programs include Sarah Jessica Parker, Gwyneth Paltrow, Nicole Richie, and Anthony Anderson.
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AOL is shutting down AOL Music news and the employees in that division are being fired. There are tweets being sent out from the AOL Music website and from Spinner’s Twitter account. Poor performance is being cited as a result of the shut-down. Winamp, SHOUTcast, and the Spinning music blog may not be entirely shutdown.
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AOL has acquired gadget reviews website Gdgt.com. It is unknown how much the acquisition was for, but rumor has it that it worth in the “high seven figures.” Gdgt.com joins other tech websites in AOL’s network including TechCrunch, Joystiq, TUAW, and Engadget. Engadget signed a partnership with Gdgt last year to feature the Gdgt data box on their website. In 2011, there was rumors floating around that CNET wanted to acquire Gdgt.
AOL has reported their best quarterly revenue growth over the past 8 years due to strong search and ad sales. Revenue increased 4% to around $600 million in Q4 and beat analyst estimates of $573.3 million.
