Ouch. I wish you had said this stuff last year… why wait until I’m leaving?!
I did the best I could for the company, and although it seems like I’m always trying to get press I can tell you that I’m not. I’ve got enough press for one (or two) lifetimes.
My goal was to be 100% transparent in running my projects because that leads to the best project and business result in my experience.
The transparency we are used to at Weblogs, Inc. was very different than how any big company (like AOL or Yahoo) is used to. I think it was that combination of massive transparency + big company that lead to all the press. It wasn’t by design, honest. I came to a company that never talked to the public and was very open… this opened the door for other folks to join the conversation and debate.
You have to agree with me–at the very least–that my time at AOL resulted in better debate and transparency right?!
In terms of taking credit for products what are you talking about? AIM Lite? AOL Search? Those are the only things I really ever mentioned that were outside my departments, and I never took credit for those projects. I was honest about the problems with those products, what people were doing to fix it, and praised the hell out of folks when we did.
In terms of Blogsmith it’s been running the largest blog network in the world for years (and the largest blogs in the world: Engadget and TMZ), so it is done. Like beyond done!
Now, it might not be ready for a consumer launch, but that isn’t what we built. We built a professional blog platform and it’s running most of AOL’s new content projects. Have you looked at TMZ, the music blogs, and the sports blogs!??!?! They are kicking ass with blogsmith behind them!
Also, I wouldn’t discount Brian’s ability to have Blogsmith ready for pubic use in a very short period of time–it AOL asks him to do that.
Yeah, I know I’m out there….. but I always did it for the company not myself. My goal was always to get people to pay attention to AOL again, and to push the spirit of debate inside the company.
I’m sorry you took it the wrong way.
best and good luck,
Jason