Let’s see, I think in 1995 I started AOL Studios to build new brands to ride on top of the AOL network as well as the web at large. At the time, AOL was becoming the biggest virtual MSO in the sky but you just knew that there would be a billion people online and that new brands that rode on top of all distribution would garner the most value. In a sense this is what Google achieved. That distributed concept forshadowed the distributed web and Web 2.0 business models by a dozen years. We also were building a watermark that looked like today’s widget architecture to cross promote back and forth across the network.
AOL also created a Liberty Media-like holding company called Greenhouse in 1994, 14 years ago. 
It was all in the name of building out NEW brands and businesses without the AOL brand aside it. We believed in the power of the web to create a new medium and that new brands would emerge as favorites of a new consuming generation. I also believed that the value would accrue to the super setting brands that had distribution across all connections on a global basis. Content and utility brands always become more valuable than distribution brands in the long run. MTV is more important than Viacom cable. Did you even know that Viacom was once a big cable MSO company?
Let me count some of the non-AOL specific brands we owned and launched at the time via AOL Studios: Digital Cities (local); Worldplay Games (social gaming); Electra (women’s site); Entertainment Asylum (entertainment and celebrity); Thrive (health and wellness); The Hub (teens’ site); and Real Fans (the first sports blogging platform.) We also acquired and managed Moviefone and Mapquest. We launched Ozzie the Elf as the first cross platform character from Santa’s Home Page. He left the online world and became an ABC holiday special on network TV produced by Brandon Tartikoff. I could go on and on. How I wish we had continued to support the build out of these vertical sites and cross platform programming rather than continuing to invest in our dial-up marketing efforts.
Greenhouse also helped launch some great brands and first-of-their-kind programming efforts. We provided carriage and money in exchange for equity: Motley Fool; iVillage; Excite; Preview Travel/Travelocity; The Knot; WebMD; NetNoir(first African American site), PlanetOut; iGolf; Genieasy (horoscopes); and literally dozens and dozens of other new brands were launched and partially owned by AOL at the time. We also launched a precursor to the Flickr photo service.
As an old timer, it is wonderful to see strategies and concepts articulated more than a dozen or so years ago being reinvigorated and supported now. This is exactly the right strategy only now with broadband pipes and ad dollars available and internet advertising spending passing TV and cable spending, it won’t be seen as being ahead of its time. It will be seen as rational and wise.
