A friend of mine works/worked at a sharply liberal blogging site that got to being pretty well known, and he was a major player in assembling its content infrastructure. AOL bought the site and have coopted that infrastructure for all their content in this new media empire. Needless to say, he gave notice and is looking to move elsewhere.

But AOL’s strategy slideshow got leaked (friend didn’t do it) and we’ve been reading over it for a laugh. And by laugh, I mean cry. What is AOL’s strategy? They’re turning into nothing beyond a content farm, and once again the word metrics comes into play. Amongst their strategy details is a daily meeting, at each of their blogs, to discuss the site metrics. And here I thought I had it bad having to look at them quarterly.

Their metrics is slightly more meaningful in the sense that it drives their ad revenue, and in that it’s helping them to bring about the death of the internet with their content-farmed search engine optimization hell. But to sit and stare at them daily… wow.

‘Metrics’ is a management buzzword. I’m starting to consider it the most dangerous and most destructive buzzword of all time.

Meanwhile, said friend (who is very liberal, as am I) may have gotten a very, very generous and high ranking offer to work for, of all places, Glenn Beck’s blog/newspaper. The thought is nothing short of hilarious, and yet….