Last week, AOL told users of its Hometown and Journals services that they would shut down within a month. The soon-to-be gone offerings are two of many services, features and projects the company has axed or is planning to axe this year. News of the cuts has been dribbling out throughout the summer and fall, but we can speed things up: We've got an internal list of 50+ projects AOL has shuttered or plans to shutter.
Many caveats here: AOL is still adding new properties and projects, of course. And this isn't a complete list of belt-tightening measures that AOL has taken this year (not included, for instance, is the mid-summer hiatus that the company imposed on some of its bloggers). And as we said, the demise of some of these projects and products has already been announced.
As far as the list itself: We're hard-pressed to find projects we think AOL is foolish to be dropping. We're far from convinced that its newish strategy, which is more or less dependent on the fortunes of its Platform A third-party ad network, will pan out. But we don't see how keeping any of these items helps the company move forward.
That said, we'll confess that we simply don't know what several of these items actually are. We assume, for instance, that the reference to Magnfiy.net means that AOL is no longer supporting that third-party video platform (UPDATE: Magnify.net says they've got nothing to do with AOL, so they don't understand why their name showed up on this list). But what was, or still is, the "Tardis" calendar?
So let us know, in comments below or via our anonymous tip box, if we're wrong: Is anything on the hit list worth saving?
UPDATE: A helpful reader attempts to answer our Tardis question:
Tardis is one of the old versions of AOL Calendar that dates from at least 2005 when I was still there. This is not such a problem for AOL US, as they are on a newer platform. But AOL UK (and I guess all of the other international versions) are still on the old skool Calendar. So either they will upgrade the international versions to the same code as the US (e.g. calendar.aol.co.uk), or they will just be broken once Tardis is turned off. I wonder which they they will choose bearing in mind all the hard-coded links in the AOL client?
Video/radio/Winamp
UnCut brand
HiQ
Fugu
Windows Media Streaming
AOL Video 10ft
10ft on 2, HiQ
AMoD on MCE
AMoD on TWC
Video Commerce
Predixis on Winamp
Ceased ingesting 3rd party videos
AOL Video DRM
Onstream
2CMedia Productions
UnCut on Mobile
UnCut Payloaders
HP IP enabled TVs
Magnify.net
Direct File Downloader
H.264
Userplane enabled-syndicated video player
New content management and ingestion system
Messaging/social platforms/homepages/toolbars/personal media/community
Transition US Chinese Portal
AIM Today
ADP-based AOL.com Apps
Transition AOL Pictures to Bluestring
AOL Hometown
ICQ Universe and ICQ Labs
ICQ2Go Java version
ICQ Pro, ICQ Lite, ICQ 4, ICQ 5, ICQ 5.1
Older AIM clients
Old ICQ Welcome Screen
Journals
FDO Chat
10" Vista Applications
UNPT-based welcome screens
Big Bowl-based AIM dashboard
AOL message boards
X-Drive Desktop
Desktop & safety
OpenRide
AOL 8.0 and AOL 8.0+ support*
AOL 9.0 - Bunker Hill support*
AOL 9.0 Optimized - Thailand support*
Active virus shield (Kaspersky)
Free anti-virus (legacy McAfee)
Safe search & surf
Computer check-up
Mobile
Legacy WAP portal
WAP 1.0 portal
Email
Old Webmail product and infrastructure (Atlas)
AOL communicator mail client
Old mobile mail product and infrastructure (PigeonMail)
Old calendar product and infrastructure (Tardis)
Old sync infrastructure
Voice
Aim phoneline
*Apps still run
See Also: More AOL Shutdowns: Journals, Hometown Axed
AOL Boss Randy Falco Begs Time Warner To Put Him Out Of His Misery
Time Warner: Some Kind Decision On AOL "Soon"
Dear Yahoo: Please Don't Blow AOL Deal
Carl Icahn Preps For His First Yahoo Board Meeting
Yahoo: Ok, Ok. We'll Talk To AOL
