AOL home page to offer multiple email and social network accounts

12 May 2009 | 15.03 Europe/London

AOL is relaunching its home page as the only place where UK surfers can check their mail and log on to multiple social networks automatically from one location.

Curiously, the new homepage is not yet available to all visitors, despite today’s announcement. It is instead being rolled out so that within a couple of weeks all users will be offered the new look page and its extra features.

The main difference is that the mail and weather panel option on the right of the page is supplemented by icons that allow users to log in to multiple email accounts (such as AOL, Google Mail, Hotmail and Yahoo!) as well as log on to AIM, Bebo, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

The page will remember log on details so user name and passwords for each site need only be entered once. Then, from one page, different email accounts can be monitored and profile activity information (such as status and friend requests and mail notification) can be picked up for social networks.

The company, which owns Bebo, is now solely involved in web content, having sold its ISP business to Carphone Warehouse. It claims a similar approach has proven successful in America where it says visitors spend 26% longer on the home page. Given that AOL owns a group of online advertising companies, under the Platform A brand, it is not surprising that it is trying to encourage people to stay longer on the home page so they present more opportunity to be advertised to.

Hence it was with little surprise that Dana Dunne, AOL Europe Chief Executive, welcomed the new look page by referencing not only how it would make the web easier to navigate for users but would also provide advertising opportunities.

“As the Web has become more fragmented, consumers want choice and relevance in their Web experience,” she says.

“The reinvented homepage offers a convenient, one-stop destination where users can access everything they love on the web within just a few clicks. For the advertising community, it means even greater reach and relevancy for campaigns aimed at audiences across a wealth of rich media content and channels already available on AOL."

Dan Bolger, AOL Europe's Director of Homepages, added: "With increasing choices on the web.... you now have to offer so much more to maintain audience loyalty - and that is what we are doing with our new homepage.”