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Bigger, fatter, richer | page 1, 2
"Look at the body language of this group," said Levin, cueing AOL COO Robert Pittman (the MTV founder who once ran TW's theme parks) to put his arm around TW vice chairman Turner. The Q&A session ended with the predictable photo-ops -- Levin and Case shaking hands, exchanging high-fives -- though I found it most notable that "old-media" guy Levin was the only one onstage without a tie. Still, it must seem ironic that the company that seemed the most determined to crack the genetic code of the Internet was now, in essence, owned by the upstart some said couldn't sell groceries. AOL's stock has split twice and Pathfinder is now a muddled memory. Dick Duncan, editor of Time.com and a veteran of the company since the '60s, maintains that Pathfinder (which he helped start) did its job. "The individual brands are doing fine," he says, pointing to both Money.com and People.com (which has an exclusive deal with AOL) as examples. "What didn't work was the idea that they would have something in common." The individual sites that were meant to comprise a sort of Time Warner Legion of Superheroes did not prove the megadraw the company had envisioned; less than 10 percent of their traffic came from the front page. But still, Pathfinder served as "nursery for individual sites," some of which are all grown up now. Also Today The Net on AOL's Time Warner deal
Will the new colossus change the Internet for better or worse? AOL and Time Warner's marriage of insecurity
Fear drove the two companies into bed with each other. Now it's our turn to be afraid.
What Time.com's relationship will be to AOL is yet to be determined, but Duncan points out that the site is soon to be bundled into a hub with CNN.com anyway and that it will continue to supply analysis and background to that news site's breaking stories. And the merger does not necessarily limit future potential partnerships. "Corporate relationships don't restrict your ability to get the best deal," he said, pointing to the deal Road Runner (Time Warner's high-speed cable-modem network) has struck with Fox News. Gone too is much of the proprietary feeling people at TW once had about their company; it has simply morphed and merged too often (and too significantly) to stick around for the ride and not enjoy it. "The Time Inc. many of us joined is so long gone," said a 16-year veteran writer I spoke to. "I think the feeling is it's better to be the biggest than to have the company stripped. For a while there was a fear they would began to sell off their assets in bits and pieces." No fear now, at least not the day the merger was announced. Old-timers (those who didn't cash out eons ago) are waiting to see what happens next, while the new folks have the example of editors who got rich on the Time Warner merger to look to. "There are secretaries here who are supposed to be millionaires," says Susan Quick, food editor of the soon-to-be-launched Real Simple. "You wouldn't believe the Prada boots I see in the cafeteria." It's starting to sound like Condé Nast.
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