A Conversation with Ziv Navoth

AOL sure is in an interesting place these days, they have a brand new CEO (ex Google VP Tim Armstrong), a legacy dial-up access business that more than twenty years after it was launched still makes billions of dollars a year and the rest of AOL split up into three different groups; Platform A which is one of largest advertising networks, Media Glow which includes AOL.com and mega blogs like TMZ and Engadget and the group which most interests me; People Networks which includes AIM, ICQ, Bebo, Yedda, Goowy and the newly acquired SocialThing.

People Networks are now planning an extensive synergy of all these properties (and also 3^rd party outside content) under the banner of “life streaming” where users will be able to syndicate all their online activity into one stream.

I was lucky enough yesterday to have a conversation with Ziv Navoth SVP Marketing at People Networks, Ziv is a very interesting guy; at Bebo where he ran marketing, he grew the user base from 22 million to 45 million users and pioneered numerous innovations including a new business model for media companies to distribute and monetize their content and a new form of online entertainment, combining original productions with brand sponsorship. Since the Bebo acquisition his task at AOL is to expand a network already 90+ million strong. See my full conversation with him below.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EA2Skt5qduM]