Image via CrunchBaseAOL Inc. has just announced to be soon introducing its professional division, which will be called ‘AOL Industry.’ It is planned to be launched this Monday aiming at three different industries; government, energy and defense. The concept behind the idea is to form an amalgam of both, taking the habits of social media, video and design from consumer-oriented websites of today and then applying those concepts into the media for business professionals.
Jay Kirsch, the Vice President of AOL, himself pointed out that "(Trade media) hasn't done as good a job at innovating as consumer media." Kirsch was the first one to bring forward the idea behind this concept in front of AOL executives at the end of last summer. Kirsch was keen to observe that "If you look at most of the innovations that have really changed media most of them have been consumer facing and not business-to-business."
AOL Energy will be the first one to be implemented publically, soon after which AOL Government and AOL Defense will also be launched, sometime around June. AOL Industry has declared that it will not charge any money for subscription and all access to the entire material will be free, however, it did also announce that AOL does not intends to release any sort of printed component of any franchise any soon.
This will be a very tough and competition for AOL as it steps foot into a market, with already very dominant trade magazines like Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, and News Corp's Dow Jones. AOL will really have to stand out to its competitors in order to make its own mark and create its own consumer base. Kirsch shared some of his plans, saying that "We are going to offer a social online environment that is not available elsewhere -- stealing a page a little bit from the Huffington Post and inviting industry executives to be part of the conversation as well.”
Kirsch, who was former C.E.O of Imaginova and publisher of Space News, has hired eight new employees so far, in support if this new launch. Peter Gardett is a former bureau chief of Argus Media and now hired as the editor of AOL Energy while Wyatt Kash, who just retired as the editor-in-chief of Government Computer News and Defense Systems will be employed as the editor of AOL Government. The editor of AOL Defense will be Colin Clark, who has covered Congress and intelligence for Space News so far.
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