Loren Feldman of 1938media and I were chatting about Facebook’s arrogance and the irresponsible way that they handle your privacy. Facebook clearly has their own agenda and wants to advance their cause at the expense of their user community. Every time they release something new it is greeted with shock, surprise and a lot of bitching from their base.

AOL does not have the aforementioned annoyances, but they aren’t perfect either. They have a whole host of other [very fixable] problems.

Feldman is spot on about using their ICQ dollars to do campaigns that showcase their thoughts on privacy and frankly what they have to offer. Check out his video on what AOL needs to do to kick Facebook’s ass. Yes, the solutions to their problems come mostly through marketing and redesign. The infrastructure is there, but so is the ick.

AOL has The Ick

What ick? The portal ick. AOL is not known as a social networking space. It is a portal and it has the ick of a portal in its design. AOL is PACKED full of awesome stuff, but it’s as hard to find stuff there as it is to find soccer on ESPN.com. The best social media sites make their functionality easy enough for a drunk monkey to find.

AOL gets the aforementioned first point for sure. They know that in order to beat Facebook or at least steal market share that they need to have the same functionality without the privacy problems and flat-out lack of attention to the voice of the customer. AOL developers are smart and their systems are sound, but the second point, the point about the drunk monkey, this is where they struggle.

Privacy

They also get something that Facebook clearly does not get. Users want to be protected. They want to feel safe and secure when they go online. Most AOL help includes both help with problems and quickly addresses privacy issues. It’s transparent. It’s up front because it’s not an issue. For example from the AOL lifestream beta help, the 5th question starts a whole section on privacy:

• Who can see my AOL Lifestream?
• How do I manage my privacy settings?
• Who can comment or like my posts?
• How do I keep my updates from showing up in search results?
• etc

What they Need to Gain Share

AOL needs to fork their experience into 2 different, separate entry points. Keep the portal experience for people who like portals. Portals are just content aggregators. They try to be everything on one page and they are really confusing, but at least you can customize them. Let the user choose the default experience, but give them a social network type experience as well. The components are all there. There are status updates, games, AOL is the king of chat, buddies, there is content and now they have an activity stream called lifestream.aol.com. Lifestream is a really good start, but they need to find a way to elegantly incorporate the other stuff into it to win. The portal has ways to use Twitter, Facebook, AIM and some other stuff without leaving. That needs to be a part of the lifestream. Content Strategists and UX people can solve this stuff easily. I know just the people.

This should be a separate post, but the lifestream has a bunch of things that Buzz is lacking, most notably the ability to filter content based on channel and type. How novel!

So here’s what they need: 1) Design changes that incorporate stuff they already have into the lifestream platforms. 2) A kick ass marketing program – that educates people on what AOL has- because a lot of people only remember “You’ve Got Mail” and those shlocky CDs in the mail. Focusing on privacy and the fact that leaving Facebook doesn’t lose you anything are AOLs keys to (re)gaining significant share. The game companies follow suit and the next thing you know we are complaining about Farmville on AOL – or are we? It is already pretty easy to filter the stuff we don’t want out of the lifestream.

What else am I missing?