AOL has rolled out the next two sites in its busy 2008 launch schedule: On deck today, personal finance site Walletpop and professional photo site Pixcetera. This is all part of AOL's bet that it can establish non-AOL brands (like Asylum and Massively) to capture a fracturing online audience.
AOL is giving WalletPop some big promotion: A new "Money" button on the AOL front page refers to the site, as well as a button atop AOL's Money & Finance, "Personal Finance At WalletPop." AOL's Money & Finance was the third-ranked finance portal in June, behind Yahoo Finance and MSN Money, according to Nielsen Online, with a little more than 12 million unique visitors.
Once at WalletPop, however, the AOL branding is pretty much non-existent, which is part of AOL's strategy. Men's site Asylum also has a front-page AOL button, but very little AOL branding on the site. Among the sites launched this year: BigDownload.com. Still to come from AOL: a site for young women.
Worth noting that AOL isn't the only one that thinks people are looking for money advice online: IAC's FiLife recently relaunched, and TheStreet.com launched a site for non finance pros, MainStreet, earlier this year.
See Also: AOL On Web Site Launch Binge
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