AOL leverages tech publications with new network

By Ed Oswald | Published April 10, 2008, 12:04 PM

AOL will aggregate its tech-oriented sites through a single portal, attempting to cash in on an already broad user base accessing those blogs.

Switched will now become the hub for the company's efforts, and draw in content from various blogs already under AOL's tech umbrella. Additionally, the site will lose prominent AOL branding.

Content on Switched will be pulled from the Engadget family of sites, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, and Download Squad. However, a check of the site Thursday morning also included some content from off-network sites.

With a more cohesive group powering AOL's tech section, its reach will be approximately five million visitors per month. This makes it about twice the size of Wired, and about the same size as Yahoo Tech.

It also makes the network more palatable to advertisers, who will be able to market a brand with a significant reach. In a statement announcing the formation, AOL indeed referred to this, saying it will be easier to buy advertising across these sites.

"We're bringing together some of the Web's most powerful and fastest-growing tech blogs to create a technology publishing powerhouse," weblogs chief Marty Moe said in a statement.

Visitors can access the network through a link on AOL.com which redirects to Switched, or continue to access them through their normal domain names. On the redesigned Engadget sites and Switched, a user can navigate from site to site through a menu bar near the top of the page.