AOL’s Products and Technologies Group launched an enhanced version of AOL Web Mail that offers users one-click access to Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and a variety of third-party sites and destinations directly from the AOL Web Mail page.

Over the past year, AOL has added more than 30 new features and a variety of new functionality to Web Mail in an effort to make it more open to third-party content and to offer more monetization opportunities to advertisers. The new version is being released globally, making it available in more than 38 countries and locales around the world.

Key features of AOL’s new Web Mail product include:

Access to Third-Party E-mail Accounts: The third-party mail plug-ins allow users to preview Yahoo! Mail and Gmail within the AOL Web Mail experience, as well as take advantage of one-click access to Yahoo! Mail and Gmail.

Faster performance: Using updated technologies, AOL has increased the speed and performance of its Web Mail experience, and enhanced the user interface to make it more intuitive.

Themed Skins: More than 45 new “skins” or themes let users personalize their page, and offer advertisers the ability to work with AOL to create themes that will appeal to key audiences.

Plug-in Gallery: Users can customize their Web Mail page by choosing from a variety of new plug-ins offering one-click access to favorite sites, content, Gmail and Yahoo! Mail. The Gallery also offers access to all of the AOL gadgets currently stored in the myAOL Gallery. In addition, AOL is inviting third-party developers to create new gadgets for Web Mail via http://dev.aol.com.

AOL Sync: Users can make real-time updates to AOL Calendar and Address Book from their desktop or a variety of wireless devices, including the Blackberry and iPhone. In addition, users around the globe can enjoy a completely mobile AOL Mail experience from virtually any device.

The launch marks the first release from the AOL Product and Technologies Group, created as one of the final steps in AOL’s transformation to an advertising-supported business.

AOL announced today a series of significant developments that will dramatically expand, reposition and monetize its digital publishing business in 2009. Anchoring today’s announcement is the creation of a new AOL business unit, MediaGlow, which will centralize AOL’s entire publishing efforts, with the goal of greatly expanding the unit’s global reach in the coming year.

This move also completes AOL’s transformation to an advertising supported business. MediaGlow and its publishing assets will now join Platform-A and People Networks as the third core business for AOL.

In conjunction with today’s announcement, AOL announced two important publishing developments:

• MediaGlow will continue its aggressive momentum in the development of the new AOL.com, and its vertical Web sites focused on passion points, with the goal of creating over 30 editorially curated sites in 2009. In addition to newly curated sites, MediaGlow will also maximize the technology of acquired companies Relegence and Sphere and begin an unprecedented effort to build thousands of medium and long-tail focused automated sites in 2009 and 2010, which will efficiently continue AOL’s growth position in publishing.

* MediaGlow will add to its infrastructure two state-of-the-art studios, located in AOL Headquarters in New York City and its offices in Los Angeles. MediaGlow Studios will provide new video production capabilities from hi-def video to complete editing and encoding. The studios will also be used to shoot original video productions that will now be distributed globally.

AOL websites continued to see strong growth in November, extending year-over-year growth in unique visitors to 22 consecutive months, according to the November 2008 comScore Media Metrix report.

Unique visitors to AOL’s programming content sites grew 3% year-over-year to 54 million in November. In addition, page views climbed 66% year-over-year to 3.8 billion and engagement (total minutes) grew 33% year-over-year in November, showing AOL consumers are actively engaging with the sites. Advertising revenues on AOL’s programming sites have had double-digit growth year-over-year in Q3 2008.

In addition, the recently completely redesigned AOL.com, which opened the site to third-party content, e-mail, social networks and more, grew 14% in page views, 13% in unique visitors and 29% in total minutes, year-over-year.

AOL announced the launch of PlaySavvy.com, a site that targets parents of children ages 5-17 and helps them decipher the world of games, both PC and console. PlaySavvy also helps parents stay aware of their kids’ entertainment choices including assisting them in making informed decisions about buying games for their children.

The PlaySavvy.com launch is a continuation of AOL’s overall programming goal to offer consumers interactive and engaging experiences with relevant sites that target people’s passion points. This year, AOL launched several targeted sites including ParentDish.com, Lemondrop.com, WalletPop.com, and Holidash.com.

“Playing video games is one of the top pastimes for children these days, almost more than watching TV. We created AOL PlaySavvy to help parents navigate through all the gaming information out there in order to decide what’s appropriate for their children,” said Libe Goad, Editor-in-Chief, AOL PlaySavvy. “In addition, PlaySavvy provides advertisers the opportunity to reach this targeted user base by creating appealing campaigns around the content.”

AOL announced the launch of “Nice One! Stories of Thanks and Giving,” a site that gathers stories of nice things people have done from the world of entertainment, sports and everyday life, and encourages users to submit their own stories. The site, developed in partnership with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, is part of a broad effort by AOL to support the hospital’s fifth annual Thanks and Giving campaign.

Nice One! highlights real-life stories to help promote the spirit of giving during the holiday season, such as the story of a family who tipped their struggling waitress $10,000, and the story of a professional basketball coach who helped a 13 year-old sing the national anthem when she forgot the words. The site also features original content from St. Jude, including patient stories, videos and other resources, as well as information on how to donate directly to St. Jude.

AOL sites hit all-time high traffic numbers and marked the 21st month of consecutive year-over-year growth for unique visitors, according to the October 2008 comScore Media Metrix report.

Unique visitors to AOL’s programming content sites grew 7% year-over-year to 54.3 million in October, and page views more than doubled, up 101% year-over-year to 4.2 billion. Engagement (total minutes) grew 51% year-over-year in October. Total minutes reached an all-time high on AOL.com, growing 27% year-over-year. Additionally, AOL.com page views grew 27%, and unique visitors and total visitors were up 9%, year-over-year, as the site further opened up to third-party content, services and features. In addition, AOL Webmail, reached an all-time high of 3.5 billion page views marking a 31% year-over-year growth.

AOL showed growth in sites that reach men 18-34 such as Asylum, Engadget, FanHouse, and GameDaily, as well as sites that target women 18-54 such as the AOL Living, sites which include Lemondrop, StyleList, ParentDish, Home, and Food.

Now, we will just have to see how this would be translated to earnings.

AOL’s Platform-A in partnership with T-Mobile USA, launched an unprecedented billion-impression web advertising campaign across Platform-A today and tomorrow. The first-of-its-kind advertising buy underscores Platform-A’s ability to reach more U.S. online consumers than any other online advertising business. Platform-A includes AOL’s owned-and-operated sites, along with the thousands of sites in the Advertising.com third-party network.

Platform-A and T-Mobile collaborated to create the “T-Mobile Billion Block,” the most-expansive two-day ad buy in Platform-A history and will spotlight the T-Mobile G1 with Google, the first Android-powered mobile phone. Over a two-day period, the T-Mobile G1 will dominate a significant amount of AOL and other Platform-A inventory, and it’s estimated that approximately 81.5 million consumers will be exposed to the new phone over the campaign’s 48-hour run.

BlackVoices has launched BV Power List, a new blog that provides men with tips on how to succeed at work, home and play in order to make their own power moves in their daily life. A key feature of the new blog is the editors’ weekly pick of the top five industry leading African-American influencers. The first BV Power List consists of Barack Obama, Tyra Banks, Tyler Perry, Magic Johnson and Mellody Hobson.

“At a time when we could be electing our first African-American President, we felt it was important to bring attention to other influential people of color from across America’s most dynamic industries,” said BlackVoices’ Director Tariq Muhammad. “We feel our first five Power List members really represent the leadership within the black community.”

AOL announced the launch of when.com, a new hyper-local online event guide that enables users to search and browse for a wide range of events in their local area, including kids and family activities, community events, live performances, sporting events and many others.

Each event listing includes detailed information, reviews, maps and directions from MapQuest, and when applicable, links to purchase tickets. Users can also easily bookmark events or add them to their AOL, Google, Outlook or Yahoo Calendar.

Events on when.com are searchable by time (today, tomorrow, next seven days, etc.), type (Arts and Crafts, Community, Dance, etc.) and by geographic area. Users can easily browse through events by using navigation tabs along the top and left-hand side of the page, or search for events by using the convenient search box at the top of the page.

In the coming weeks, additional when.com features will be rolled out including a when.com widget that can be added to any social networking page and a new “MyWhen” feature that will enable users to save events to their own when.com calendar and receive alerts and reminders for upcoming events. In addition, content from when.com will be integrated across MapQuest Local, AOL CityGuide, AOL Travel and other AOL websites.

When.com is powered by Zvents, a local search engine powering a network of hundreds of Web and mobile partners, featuring event listings to promote local businesses.

Platform-A is taking AOL’s programming on tour to showcase its network of web properties and new niche sites to advertisers and agencies. The tour aims to underscore how Platform-A can leverage AOL’s sites to strengthen an advertiser’s brand and generate revenue. The roadshow, titled “The Wider Web: Achieving Growth in a Fragmented Market,” previewed in Dallas on November 5, is making its national debut in New York City at the American Museum of Natural History on November 17th, and will be followed by an event in Atlanta on November 20. Other events will take place in Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco in early 2009.

“AOL has one of the largest, most diverse and most engaged audiences on the Web, and combined with Platform-A’s industry-leading technologies, we can offer advertisers a unique combination of scale, integrated branding, and advanced targeting capabilities to enable them to deliver their branding messages in an effective, engaging and highly efficient way,” said Platform-A President Lynda Clarizio. “At a time when companies make sure that every penny spent on advertising counts, AOL delivers quality content and engaged consumers and Platform-A connects marketers to this audience to drive superior results.”

To date, Platform-A has fully integrated its sales forces, and developed one insertion order and other processes to streamline ad buying. In addition, Platform-A has accelerated its product development efforts with recent launches including Spot Marketplace, enabling advertisers to bid on nonreserved inventory across AOL’s Web sites; PubAccess, a self-service interface enabling Web sites to place their inventory for sale in Platform-A’s third party display network; audience targeting across Platform-A; and the creation of a 300 x 600 ad unit across AOL’s homepages and co-branded sites.

Each roadshow will provide advertisers and agencies with an in-depth look at AOL’s programming, and the opportunities they offer to reach targeted, highly desirable audiences, leveraging Platform-A’s industry-leading tools and technologies.