Talk:AOL

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A news item involving AOL was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the In the news section on 14 May 2015.

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The content of Jason Smathers was merged into AOL on 11 june 2012. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. For the discussion at that location, see its talk page.

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Disgruntlement over user profiles

There is a notable thread of AOL history that is missing from the article:

At one time, most AOL users had an online "profile" hosted by the AOL Hometown service. When AOL Hometown was discontinued, users had to create a new profile on Bebo. This was an unsuccessful attempt to create a social network that would compete with Facebook. When the value of Bebo decreased to a tiny fraction of the $850 million AOL paid for it, users were forced to recreate their profiles yet again, on a new service called "AOL Lifestream."

AOL took the decision to shut down Lifestream on 24 February 2017, and gave users one month's notice to save off photos and videos that had been uploaded to Lifestream.^[1] Following the shutdown, AOL no longer provides any option for hosting user profiles.

During the Hometown/Bebo/Lifestream era, a user's profile could be displayed by clicking the "Buddy Info" button in the AOL Desktop software. After the shutdown of Lifestream, clicking "Buddy Info" does something that provides no information whatsoever about the selected buddy: it causes the AIM home page (www.aim.com) to be displayed.

This information should probably go into the Criticism section, because each of these "forced migrations," culminating in the complete termination of user profiles in 2017, contributed to the disgruntlement of AOL's user base. 75.163.201.149 (talk)

References

1. "AOL Lifestream Sunset Notification". Retrieved 13 April 2017.

Semi-protected edit request on 25 July 2025

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Change 'The decline continued though 2001,' to 'The decline continued through 2001,' MuslimManOfGod (talk) 17:28, 25 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Done meamemg (talk) 17:53, 25 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 15 August 2025

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Change '2021–present: As part of an independent YahooI' to '2021–present: As part of an independent Yahoo!' Thejookest (talk) 17:32, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Done — 🪫Volatile ^{📲T | ⌨️C} 17:58, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

AOL dial up internet shut down edit request

Hello since aol dialup internet shutdown is it possible to edit the article? Thanks Laniakea1 (talk) 15:51, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]