AOL Blog Controversy

Granted I have been far more faithful to my Myspace blog than my AOL blog for a while now, but I didn't realize there was a big broughaha going on about the ads that now grace the top of these blogs.

Apparently the J-Land population is up in arms that they have to deal with these ads -which are controlled by AOL and not any of us.  Since AOL is a paid service, and everything under AOL falls under that service (journals included), many feel that this is pretty bogus.  Some are going as far as taking their blogs off of AOL altogether - something I realized as I was going through my Favorites folder "Journals", which had a gazillion blogs bookmarked from my avid J-Land participation a year or so back.

Considering that AOL is still fairly expensive in comparison to other ISPs, I think it is pretty cheesy that they milk advertisers for more money just because the blog phenomenon took off. 

I guess it never phased me because Myspace is covered in ads, but it's also a free service.  It's also a better blog service, to be quite honest.  You have a lot more control over personal expression, the blog subscription service is a lot more reliable and it's just more user friendly.  It's a lot better because you can see who's reading your blog, and the networking aspect is awesome.  You can join a bunch of blog groups with people who have similar interests, and now it features a "Most Popular Blog" feature.

I've kept up the AOL journal for those times I feel like discussing personal stuff, and kept the Myspace blog more light hearted.  That's still my intent.

But I have to say the more I think about it, the more I resent that I'm getting charged for AOL AND dealing with ads, for a service that is considerably sophomoric at best.

Therefore, if any of you wish to keep up with me, you can see me on a more regular basis over at http://blog.myspace.com/allgingerallthetime.