A new version of America Online's portal Web site AOL.com officially launched on Thursday, and a massive marketing campaign was due to begin within days, AOL said. While the main AOL.com welcome screen is no longer in beta, the My AOL and Video hub sections were still in beta at the time of this post. An online advertising campaign that began in August will be expanded over the next month or two, and ads will soon begin appearing in newspapers, magazines and billboards, AOL said.
The move comes as AOL gets a pat on the back from Time Warner Chairman Richard Parsons. "The real driver of enhanced value, I think, is going to be AOL in the short term and the long term," The New York Times quoted him as saying Wednesday at a Goldman Sachs media conference. He also indicated that he was "looking real hard" at moves like buying back more stock and increasing the dividend.
That seems to contradict rumors that Time Warner wanted to get rid of its formerly troubled Internet unit. The New York Times reported a week earlier that Microsoft and Time Warner had discussed possible combinations of MSN and AOL, including a merger.
Things are looking up for AOL.