AOL to Redirect Patch from Local News to Local Ads
August 3, 2012
The light bulb has gone on at AOL regarding troubled property Patch: forget local news and do ads instead. Digital Trends ponders, “Patch Restructuring to Turn Into a Craigslist Competitor?”
The planned overhaul of Patch promises to mirror Craigslist. CEO Tim Armstrong spun the changes this way—he says the new version of Patch “is really about unlocking the vitality in towns… groups, commerce, and the social aspects of towns for a much deeper, richer engagement level.” A nice turn of phrase, that.
Writer Molly McHugh notes some possible consequences of the shift. She observes:
“Realigning its product from hyper-local news to hyper-local commerce is a pretty big pivot, and one that would affect the many, many freelance writers Patch employs. Not to mention the fact that taking on Craigslist is a formidable task: despite any of the collective Internet’s problems with Craigslist and its refusal to massively update its interface and become even incrementally more user-friendly, Craigslist has time on its side. When it comes to a crowd-sourced platform, that’s a major investment.”
Indeed, AOL is wise to capitalize on the local connections it has built through local advertising. Still, the loss of local news blogs is a shame.
Cynthia Murrell, August 3, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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