Here is the email I sent to all AOL employees
Dear AOL Family,
Tomorrow morning you will likely see some news about an important decision I’ve made regarding my future with AOL and, more importantly, the next phase of my life. And I wanted you to hear it from me first. On January 1, 2007, I will be stepping down from my active management of the AOL Audience Business, where today I am President, while retaining my role as Vice Chairman of AOL.
I’ve always loved AOL and all of you. And I still do. I’ve been here during good times and not so good times, and there has never been a day when I haven’t been happy to come to work and serve our customers.
I came to AOL hoping and dreaming that the interactive world would be a magical and special place. At that time we had fewer than 300,000 members and the entire online universe was less than 2 million connections. Today, there are almost 1 billion online connections, and we have about 20% of that market. And I am thrilled that we’ve played a big part in the realization of that dream. I also came to AOL dragging a cardboard dinosaur trying to inspire us to compete against the likes of Microsoft. We did that. I promised we would be one of the world’s leading interactive media companies. And we did that, too. And at our last all-hands meeting I asked everyone to stand up and turn, to symbolize our new direction, which you all have done. Thank you. We have reconceptualized AOL — with all green arrows and growing fast, and with a bold new mission statement — which is what I promised you four years ago when I stepped back into day-to-day management at AOL.
There are so many things I am proud of AOL for doing, but I am perhaps most proud of our recent efforts to build our new Audience Business. Just over two years ago, we talked about launching AOL.com as a portal. Just over a month ago, we announced that our advertising business is growing faster than Yahoo’s. Today, the Audience Business is AOL’s business. This company is in great hands, and it is absolutely on the right path.
I bet that I haven’t gone a week in the past four years when someone hasn’t asked me why I continue to work full-time at AOL — running meetings, drilling down on numbers, getting on product launch conference calls, making sales calls, working on technology issues, and making sure this is a company we can always believe in. My answer has always been that I love this company, and I love this business. And I love its people. And that’s still true today.
But at the same time, some other interests have been calling me, and I’d now like to balance out all of my life’s pursuits. Some of you know I’m producing a film called ‘Nanking’ that is going to be released in 2007. I have a couple of other ideas bouncing around in my head and I’m finding this creative pursuit really fulfilling. You probably know that I have a lot of other interests to pursue — from philanthropy to my sports teams — and even some new entrepreneurial efforts that have been in my head for the past year or so. This is a great moment for me to redefine my role at AOL and spend more of my energy on some of the other activities that also make me happy.
I am still going to be actively involved in the next chapters of the AOL story, just in a different way. And none of this will change until next year; I will still serve in my role as President of the AOL Audience Business through the end of this year. After that, I will continue on as Vice Chairman of AOL, offering my vision and strategic advice as we transform this great company into a leading, global Web services company. I’d also like to be something of a consumer conscience for our company and provide a voice as to what is the essential AOL-ness about our products and services and culture. I also plan to continue to mentor and encourage many of our great young leaders.
AOL is on a march to serve the world’s largest and most engaged community, and I plan to be with you — in one capacity or another — every step of the way.
You have always been there for me, and I feel responsible to AOL, to its employees, its users, and its advertisers. I promise that I will continue to work hard and stay focused, and will hand off my duties to great new leaders who will build on what we’ve created.
For now though, let’s stay the course, and get back to work!
Love,
Ted