Teens Seeing Red With New AOL Service

In an effort to attract teens, a demographic group highly valuable to advertisers, AOL launched a new, customizable service, called Red, on Tuesday.

After reporting a loss of over 2 million users in the past year, AOL is aggressively marketing new products and services tailored to different segments. Red, targeting teenagers from ages 13 to 19, replaces the former AOL Teens channel.

Offered free of charge to customers upgrading to AOL 9.0 Optimized, the Red package includes a start-up page, with a look and feel designed especially for teens, as well as customizable features for individual user desktops. Content areas include music, games, comics, freestyle, gear and gadgets, and sports.

Moreover, the highly attractive service includes content from Teen People, DC Comics, Mad Magazine, and various others.

Malcolm Bird, senior VP and general manager of AOL Kids and Teens, reported to InternetNews.com that since the launch of Red, traffic has gone up nearly 200 percent compared to that of AOL Teens.

Perhaps this is not only due to teen enjoyment of the program, but because of parental approval, as well. As with AOL Teens, Red accounts will continue to allow for parent administration. In other words, parents will administer their children’s accounts via AOL Guardian, a master account allowing them to view online activities.

“One of the things we really tried to build into Red was a system of controlled freedom…” Bird stated in CNET News. “where teens can have their own world, but where there are sufficient controls and supervision.”

According to a poll done by Jupiter Research, and reported by InternetNews.com, 18 million teens (12 to 17 years) use the Web today. The number is projected to grow to 22 million by 2007.

With these figures and some help from Red, AOL may see a little more green in the future.

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