Is AOL Finally Crashing and Burning? 193
An anonymous reader writes "AOL's disastrous quarterly report showed cash from continuing operations was down 44% from a year ago (adjusted operating income was down 37%), as it continues a rocky transition from monthly subscription fees to advertising. (Their quarterly report also notes 'the cessation of large-scale access subscriber acquisition campaigns' — investor-speak for the fact that AOL will finally stop mass mailings of free trial accounts.) Unfortunately, AOL's advertising business 'did even worse. Its revenues declined by $110 million... every single segment is down.' AOL has already lost 86% of the 30 million subscribers it reported in 2001 — down to just 4.3 million — but advertising hasn't yet filled the gap (possibly because many AOL ads had been displayed to the users AOL no longer has). But at least, as one technology blogger notes, AOL has finally released a mobile application, 'in the new definition of "late to the party."'"
Re:They still mail CDs ?? (Score:4, Informative)
The CD's? No, I pretty much hated them. The floppies though? Now those were cool. AOL ensured that no one ever had to actually buy their own disks.
See patch.com (Score:3, Informative)
"This year, AOL is spending $50 million to expand Patch nationally to hundreds of sites by the end of the year."
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2010/08/05/with_patch_aol_offers_challenge_to_local_news/?page=full [boston.com]
AOL is going hyperlocal - going to give local newspapers a run for their money.
Re:There goes the Eternal September (Score:4, Informative)
They already dont. If Eternal September hasn't ended by now then Usenet is screwed. According to Wikipedia article on eternal september [wikipedia.org]:
Best start hunting the source of infection again.
Re:What would you do? (Score:5, Informative)
Cash in on the Web 2.0 fad. Hire a hundred bloggers to blog all day long. Turn AOL.com into a huge social network, rivaling Facebook
They tried this, multiple times. And failed, multiple times. I know, I was deeply involved with the effort. First came AIMPages.com. Millions of dollars spent, negligible uptake. Then they tried building another social network based off of the old Member Directory. That never even made it out the door. Then they bought Bebo for about 5x what it was worth and only succeeded in driving away those customers it already had.
There are a lot of really smart people at AOL down in the trenches -- some of the most knowledgeable DBAs, SAs, and developers I've worked with in 20 years I met at AOL. Most of the smart ones fled or got laid off but I still know a few of the good ones who are still there, and they are the only reason anything at AOL works at all.
Executive leadership is lacking, to say the least, and they cripple every product by trying to emulate every feature a competitor has without understanding that "actually working" and "not being slow as crap" are essential features for any product. If AOL was building houses, you'd have 3 dozen managers obsessing over having marble counters, oak cabinets, and Italian tile floors, and ignoring the workers who were telling them that the roof leaked, the plumbing backed up, and the foundation was cracked.
Netscape? They pretty well killed that brand off years ago. They bought Netscape for the traffic going to the portal site, which is why they created the Mozilla foundation and dropped the browser code like a hot potato. And the traffic that they paid so much to get? 90% of it was gone within a year of the takeover. They made a half-assed attempt to resurrect it as a Digg-style social networking site, but that took off like a lead balloon.
Re:AOL: non-hereditary expression of stupidity? (Score:3, Informative)
Elsewhere I mention my time as a retention rep for AOL. Relevant to both that experience and your post, here's a story:
When I started working for AOL, I already had Internet service through Comcast. While training, I asked if they seriously expected me to get a landline just so I could dial up via 56k modem when I had a 3mbps line already. Nope.
They had the option where you could (oh wow...) run AOL over your existing connection for the same $23.90 (at the time) price. That's right. Run my free AOL employee account over my $50 a month broadband line. While they had AOL Boardband available at the time, it wasn't available in my area for some reason, meaning I couldn't get in on the free bundle as an employee.
Dogfooding is nice, in theory, but I couldn't bring myself to use AOL even just for practice. The service felt condescending, really.
Re:Dominant Businesses (Score:2, Informative)
Re:They're the 'A' in A.I.M. (Score:2, Informative)
Does anybody still use AIM? Wow. That's like using ICQ.
Yes. In the world outside of your ten ultra-chic geek friends using XMPP, the vast bulk of people still use AIM.
Trust me, it's a much larger world out here. You'd be afraid of it.
Re:Future generations won't understand... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What would you do? (Score:3, Informative)
Oh man, AIM. Let me tell you, seeing AIM running on someone's computer allows you to instantaneously gauge them as a total ignoramus. Very handy.
If you must have "instant messaging" then go with XMPP. Meanwhile anyone who's anyone is still using IRC, forever the greatest and only text chat for netizens.
Well, the point is... having an AIM account, not necessarily using the AIM client. But then, a true geek recognizes there are different tools for different jobs :) FTR I use both IRC and AIM (and MSN, and ICQ)... and I hate integrated clients.