AOL Hopes to Change Image With Services

Geoffrey writes "'In an effort to earn a new reputation as a leading Internet destination, AOL will open up to a wider audience on the Web through AOL.com. The portal will re-launch in beta form on Tuesday, offering visitors free Web mail, exclusive audio and video content, and access to a number of AOL services previously available only to subscribers,' reports BetaNews. The new AOL.com will highlight news from the blogosphere, offer free access to 15,000 videos, 130 radio stations, and 20 XM stations. In addition, AOL is launching an RSS aggregator that aims to make RSS actually simple for normal Web users. And unlike MSN's RSS endeavor, My AOL will work in Firefox, Safari and other browsers."

What AOL ought to do...

[jarich]

What AOL ought to do is start distributing the latest version of Mozilla and Open Office on all the CDs, right alongside of their own ISP software. Then people would actually keep the CDs around instead of pitching them.

This would be a huge PR coup for AOL as well a boon for the open source community.

I actually got an AOL CD with my newspaper last week-end!

Re:Sorry AOL

[Austerity Empowers]

AOL was a useful service once upon a time, like compuserve and prodigy. Technology has obsoleted it, and now they're struggling to find a place in the world.

Unfortunately corporations reach a point where they feel like they must be immortal. Sometimes you make something people like for a while, then they don't need it and you need to find something else to do. It's no ones fault, it just happens. Time to move on, do it gracefully, help your employees move on and then close up shop.

AOL however seems to envision itself as an eternal net parasite, preying on people who don't know any better. At least they could make nicer coasters.

--
Austerity Empowers, Councilor for the Undead

Re:Sorry AOL

[Momoru]

Um...great idea AOL, offer even LESS of a reason for people to continue paying for your service? Right now the only reason to stay a member is for the "exclusive content" (oh and the delightful chat rooms?). Now they are taking a lot of that exclusivity away? For the love of God AOL, you are a part of Time Warner...surely someone somewhere can see a better way to leverage all that media power???

Why is it taking AOL so long to do this?

[theurge14]

When Time Warner and AOL merged, the word was that AOL was going to become a media mega-empire of the Internet, that we would see all these exclusive and great media services streamed from AOL. You know, wild ideas like watching TV on the Internet and having the ability to send fullscreen video emails to your grandparents with no hassle.

Instead, we have TiVO and Skype and Windows Media Center and the saddest part of it all is AOL is losing out to broadband. Wouldn't that get the IRONIC tag on Fark?