Aol News & Articles

Be it an act of desperation, a shedding of excess baggage, or the ire of an activist new leader, Yahoo unloaded some weight this week. In an effort to start the new year off fresh, the company announced its retirement of ten mobile apps with the promise to replace the well with something, supposedly, even better. Believe it when we see it? 

Periodically, media research checks in on women to see how they interact and engage online. This week, AOL, in partnership with Bovitz Research Group, released the findings from an industry study it commissioned in an effort to identify determining factors that influence women's choices when it comes to consuming and sharing online content.

Over the weekend, AOL (news, site) picked up Huffington Post for US$ 315 million, bringing some firepower to its web strategy.

Social content aggregator site about.me has been picked up by AOL, just weeks after being unveiled to the public.

Social media moves so fast, it's hard to keep up. Here are the week's top stories in scan-friendly format:

• Facebook Accounts For 25% of Page Views in U.S.
• Startup Allows You To Track In-Person Twitter Interactions
• Yelp Gets Into the Check-in Offer Game
• Facebook Alternative Diaspora Goes Private Alpha

We’ve been contemplating the future of web publishing and journalism for sometime now, but recently the Federal Trade Commission decided to weigh in on the debate with a discussion paper that outlines potential policy recommendations to support the reinvention of journalism.

While you were Googling, AOL named a new CEO and chairman. Tim Armstrong, who headed up ad sales in the Americas for Google, will replace Randy Falco as chairman and CEO. As well, AOL President and COO Ron Grant is leaving the company. Perhaps Armstrong was in need of a challenge, as AOL does not have the strength of either Google or even Yahoo in terms of advertising assets or traffic. Now things will get interesting. Everything you knew about AOL is about to change.

A year or so ago we asked if Bebo (site) was the future of social networking. Then we logged into our Facebook account and forgot about them entirely.

What to do when customers aren't flocking to your site as much as the others? Create a platform that keeps users updated with any information they have registered to receive from anywhere on the web, including rival social media websites. That's what. And that's exactly was Bebo has done.

Social Media moves so fast, its hard to keep up. Here’s the week’s top stories from around the blogosphere, in scan-friendly format.

This Week:

• Twitter Cuts SMS Access
• Movable Type Goes Social
• AOL to Acquire Socialthing
• ReplyFeed.com : Social Media Conversation Management
• Google’s Failed Acquisitions in Social Media
• Facebook Launches New Social Ad Unit, and Gets Sued… Again