If I Was CEO of AOL…

Tim ‘GooglyGoo’ Armstrong is now CEO of AOL. The internets are becoming like the banking business…inbred to impunity.

I hear great things about Tim, but my letter to employees would have been a tad different than his. Here is Timmy’s:

From: Tim Armstrong
To: US Employees; Intl Employees
Sent: Friday, March 13, 2009 9:24:54 AM
Subject: Hello AOLers

Hello AOLers –

I’m really looking forward to seeing you and would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on how to make AOL and its sister properties the most powerful brands on the Internet.

My experience online started with AOL and I’ve followed the progress of the company for many years. From the early days of AIM and ICQ to the modern technology of Platform-A, AOLers are responsible for some of the most important innovations on the Internet. Although others might see challenges at AOL, I see opportunity and people who are passionate about making great products and services for consumers. My thanks to Randy and Ron for the work they’ve done to position AOL for the future.

I hope to meet as many of you as possible in Dulles and New York sometime next week, and I look forward with great enthusiasm to starting at AOL in early April. Go AOL.

– TA

Mine would look and feel a tad different:

From: Howard Lindzon
To: US Employees; Intl Employees (For NOW)
Sent: Friday, March 13, 2009 2 FREAKING AM (BOLD)
Subject: Hello Yutz’s

Well, it’s 2 am and I am on Twitter and I don’t understand why we don’t own that. I mean Twitter is the shizzle. Stop ICQ’ing and IM’ing me. It’s lame.

I know you all won’t understand this because you are busy stabbing each other in the backs over promotions, but we have a freaking opportunity at the moment. Google has some leakage. They are like ‘Drago’ in Rocky 12. They are human. Yahoo is thank god Yahoo and Microsoft sucks major assballs (yes I read that Howard Lindzon’s blog…cracks me up with his truthiness).

We could win this whole internetz thingy by default. Do you know how insane that is. Likely not…so listen up.

We are buying Twitter and taking a leadership role in the ‘Now’ Web. Go read Clay Shirky.

We will own Sports, Finance, Politics and Entertainment.

While I can’t guarantee success because of the many asshats layered into this corporate beaurocracy, I will gurantee you one thing. To improve morale, I guarantee that within 30 days I will have Wolf Blitzer working for the ‘ANUS’ Jason CalacANUS at Mahalo.

How cool is it that Randy and Ron are gone. I mean how many successful Randy’s have there been in the history of America and I would not follow a guy named Ron into a 7-11.

If you have something smart to say, tweet it and if gets retweeted 10 times by people with say 500 followers, ping me.

Cheers,

h

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