Kara Swisher in News on February 7, 2011 at 4:00 am PT
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong is the gift that keeps on giving–at least to Greg Coleman.
He’s the Chief Revenue Officer at the Huffington Post–for which the Internet giant just forked over $315 million to acquire–who will get a multimillion dollar payout from the deal.
Except Coleman is the same guy whose three-year contract as AOL’s onetime sales head was paid out by Armstrong after he was replaced after only three months.
Liz Gannes in Social on December 14, 2010 at 9:01 pm PT
Facebook employees think their company is a great place to work. In fact, among users of the jobs site Glassdoor, the social networking powerhouse was the top-ranked U.S. employer for 2010.
Kara Swisher in News on June 29, 2010 at 8:45 am PT
Tricia Primrose, AOL’s long-serving communications head, is stepping down from her job, according to a memo sent out by CEO Tim Armstrong to staff.
The move is personal, related to her family, according to the memo.
Except for BoomTown’s record run, Primrose is unusual in the length of her tenure and number of AOL exec administrations she has survived, including Steve Case and Bob Pittman, Jon Miller, Randy Falco and Ron Grant and now, Armstrong.
Peter Kafka in Media on June 24, 2010 at 7:21 am PT
Online market research company uSamp picks up DMS Insights for a Bebo-like price.
Kara Swisher in News on April 7, 2010 at 5:20 am PT
Almost from the minute former AOL head Randy Falco handed over a giant bag of cash to Joanna Shields, the awfully clever chief money charmer of once darling social networking site Bebo, it was clear it was not going to end well.
Essentially, AOL–then a unit of Time Warner–had forked over $850 million to corner the market on teen girls in the United Kingdom.
Of course, all those girls are now using Facebook.
Peter Kafka in Media on March 16, 2010 at 5:45 am PT
Want to make money? Become a former AOL executive. The Web publisher paid out $28.4 million in cash and stock to four top executives it replaced last year. It will pay some of them millions more this year.
Peter Kafka in Media on November 13, 2009 at 6:43 am PT
Little by little, AOL is offering investors more and more details about what the company will look like after it spins off from Time Warner. But the more AOL discloses, the less attractive the company looks. The newest problem: AOL’s steady flow of Google money is going away.
Kara Swisher in News on May 28, 2009 at 5:23 am PT
While there were reports that the Time Warner board was meeting today to approve the spin-off of its AOL online unit, it actually gave the move an “enthusiastic endorsement” last night, according to sources.
Time Warner just put out the press release about the move that would make AOL an “independent, publicly traded company.”
But, several sources with knowledge of the situation said AOL CEO and Chairman Tim Armstrong is set to make massive changes to the structure of AOL, sweeping aside its current set-up almost completely.
That includes keeping the access business, which many thought would be sold off and putting many of the companies it has recently acquired–including its pricey Bebo social networking site–in a separate ventures unit, which will try to attract outside investment.
Kara Swisher in News on May 26, 2009 at 9:20 am PT
According to an internal memo obtained by BoomTown, Joanna Shields, who came to AOL via its troubled acquisition of the Bebo social-networking site, will be returning to London to spend more time with her family and to “pursue entrepreneurial interests.”
Until recently, People Networks has been the third leg of the Time Warner-owned online site’s businesses, which also include advertising and content.
But under new CEO Tim Armstrong, who was one of the top sales execs at Google, AOL is largely abandoning its business-unit approach for a more functional and centralized structure.
Kara Swisher in News on April 29, 2009 at 8:23 pm PT
Platform-A President Greg Coleman–the former Yahoo advertising sales exec who came to AOL only three months ago–is leaving the company, sources said, as new CEO Tim Armstrong remakes his top staff in preparation to spin off the Time Warner online unit.
Coleman was brought to AOL by former CEO Randy Falco in February, replacing Lynda Clarizio, and will be replaced by a Google ad exec, Jeff Levick.
Armstrong, sources said, announced the moves to his staff tonight, right after he told Coleman about his decision late today.
Also out: CFO Nisha Kumar, who came to AOL in early 2007 from Time Warner, owner of the online unit.