AOL’s Patch Gets New CEO, as Just Under Three Percent of Staff Is Laid Off in Consolidation (Memo)

The hyperlocal content efforts gets trimmed in profit push and a new leader too.
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AOL’s Earnings Are Light, but Revenue and Ad Sales Are on Track

Ad sales are up across the board.
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News Byte

Patch Names Steven Kalin President and COO

Patch, AOL’s local news platform, now has a president and COO, and it’s Steven Kalin, who previously held the COO position at radio syndication giant Westwood One and health and fitness publisher Rodale. He’ll report to Jon Brod, Patch’s CEO and co-founder.

AOL Beats the Street, but Domestic Ads Droop Again

AOL is, surprisingly, one of the Web’s hottest stocks. What happens next?
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News Byte

AOL’s Patch Adds Two Execs in Strategy and Sales

AOL’s local Patch unit has added two new execs to its roster: Leigh Zarelli Lewis, who will join head of strategy and business development; and Jim Lipuma, who will run U.S. sales. Lewis was most recently VP of emerging businesses at Disney, and had also worked at IAC. Lipuma was most recently head of sales at Restaurant.com, and has also worked at Monster.com and R.H. Donnelley.

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Huffington’s Role Shrinks at AOL

Arianna Huffington acknowledged Thursday that her portfolio at AOL Inc. is being scaled back to include only the Huffington Post, undoing a structure put in place when her Web site was acquired by AOL last year.

QOTD: A Little Spite Music

I’ve never worked for a company that has been as scrutinized, criticized, and coal-raked as this one. … We have critics on Wall Street, critics in the media, local critics, national critics, the business press, the journalism reviews, bloggers, etc. There are so many that I’ve come to think of them as a single large, screechy, off-key band called BI and the Haters. It’s music to kill yourself by.

Patch editor in chief Brian Farnham bids farewell to AOL’s network of hyperlocal sites and its critics

Proxy Ho? Like Yahoo, AOL Could Face Alternate Board Slate From Irked Investor as Early as Today.

Is AOL ready to come about? Hard to see.
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CES Hangover: What You Might Have Missed

We came, we saw, we conquered … but we couldn’t possibly write about every one of the more than 20,000 products showcased in Las Vegas last week. Here’s a quick catch-up.
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AOL Moves the Furniture Around Some More, With Brod to Patch

Here’s an internal memo just sent out by AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, in which he buries the lede by noting the business partner of content czar Arianna Huffington, Jon Brod, will move to work on its local Patch effort and Mapquest mapping unit full time. There’s also some branding streamlining, which is akin to moving the couch over near the window where it looks better.
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