The Sinking Ship that is AOL 613
EyesWideOpen writes "This article at Salon discusses the ways in which AOL is trying to stay afloat, with the release of version 8.0 of it's software, in a time when AOL (which recently merged with Time Warner) has had a string of bad press -- falling stock prices, SEC investigation, etc. -- attached to it's name. One of my favorite quotes from the article says of AOL: ''It was never really an Internet company. AOL was based on the idea that people needed to live in a halfway house while they became accustomed to the Net.'...If folks can get a better, faster, cheaper online experience by ditching AOL, they'll do it in a heartbeat.'"
You've got... (Score:4, Funny)
It never was an internet company... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It never was an internet company... (Score:3, Interesting)
A lot of people will stay with AOL, either because of inertia or because, once you turn off the popups and spam, it's actually an okay ISP. (Not the best, but not terrible.)
The company is still ****ed, because it's trying to grow at the same rate it was early in its life. It probably won't go bankrupt, but it's bascially the leader in a low-margin business without much room for growth.
Interestingly, AOL realized this three years ago, and cashed in its own inflated stock for TW. For some insane reason, TW stock-holders took the deal.
Re:It never was an internet company... (Score:5, Interesting)
Uhhh, actually, this is wrong.
There was an article in the WSJ a few weeks back about how Starbuck's, while growing wildly, is actually losing market share to local coffee houses.
A lot of locals complain about the competition, but their sales are way up for the most part.
A few coffee houses go under when a Starbuck's springs up, but it may not be related. It turns out that there's always been a large turnover rate in coffee houses, a lot of them close down every year for decades. Coffee house closings are actually down.
It appears that the introduction of Starbuck's just increases the market for good coffee.
ObSlashdotObservation: Wouldn't it be nice if MS could view their competition the same way, not as enemies that have to be eliminated at any cost, but rather as part of a healthy market that allows everyone to prosper?
A relevant story about two bagel shops (Score:4, Interesting)
I lived on Southport avenue in Chicago for a while, and every morning went to a small bagel shop for breakfast. It wasn't a brand-name shop, but it was inexpensive, clean, and the food was really good. It didn't do super business, but got by just fine for years.
As the neighborhood gentrified, a corporate-chain bagel shop leased a space 1/2 block over and announced their imminent opening. The small bagel shop began preparations to close, assuming they wouldn't be able to do business against the chain. Right up until the day the corporate shop opened, I thought they were being pessimistic.
Well, the morning that the corporate shop opened, they had a line outside the store full of people who had picked up a "buy one bagel get one free" grand opening coupon.
Just down the block, the small shop had set up a table with bags of bagels and a sign: "take one bagel for free, get two more for free" -- offering passers-by three free bagels with no line.
I sat on my front steps, and watched people WALK BY the free bagel table to go stand in line at the corporate shop...then, after waiting in line and using their coupon, WALK BY the free bagel table AGAIN to get onto the train.
Eventually, I went over and got three free bagels. Nobody had taken the bagels since I had started watching, and the girl next to the table said nobody had taken them since they'd opened. After hearing this, I paid for all three bagels, and admitted to myself that I had been wrong about their pessimism -- they were right all along.
They closed for the last time that afternoon, and the corporate bagel shop was soon joined by a corporate coffee shop. Of course, there was already a corporate coffee shop nearby, but that's OK -- both are thriving.
Oh, and once I bought a sandwich at the corporate bagel shop. It (honestly) wasn't very good, and I never went back.
Re:It never was an internet company... (Score:5, Insightful)
$1 burger that costs 35 cents to make?
$1.19 drink and 9 cents of syrup/water?
Re:It never was an internet company... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It never was an internet company... (Score:4, Insightful)
My father remarked the other day that when he first came to America from Brazil, almost 40 years ago, America had no tradition of fine coffee at all. Everywhere you went, the best coffee you could find was still ass, by Brazilian standards.
Nowadays, even Denny's serves drinkable coffee, and places like Starbucks serve beverages to satisfy all but the most demanding connoisseur.
American coffee is several orders of magnitude better than it was a generation ago, according to the anecdotal evidence at my disposal. So cheer up! At least Starbucks is fronting its empire-building agenda with a real product. Having fried my share of McNuggets, I can't say the same thing for McDonald's.
Re:It never was an internet company... (Score:3, Interesting)
American coffee is several orders of magnitude better than it was a generation ago.
Add me to the list backing up this assertion.
I've been drinking coffee in the U.S. since 1976, when all you could get typically were robusta bean variants. I remember drinking swill like dishwater that, well, at least it was hot and caffeinated...
Since the time of Starbucks it's been possible to get good, dark, fresh-roasted arabica bean coffee that makes the old stuff taste like chicory.
Recently I was in Europe, anticipating super excellent coffee everywhere. Guess what? Didn't happen! I got better coffee in the U.S.! (Guess I'll have to go to a coffee-growing nation to get something better than what I can find in the U.S. on every other street corner.)
While we all hate AOL (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:While we all hate AOL (Score:5, Informative)
Go with iPass if you can. They contract with a bunch of different ISPs around the world.
When you call, your "call experience" is logged and reported for billing but also for quality control. If the number you dialed was busy or poor quality, the number will drop down the list of numbers for that city for everybody using the dialer. Thus, the ISP has incentive to keep the lines high-quality (since they don't get paid if you don't use their lines) and you get the best known number wherever you travel.
Additionally, in a corporate setting, it uses radius for authentication. We use Steel-belted RADIUS to authenticate it against our Win2K domain, but you could use a built in tool.
No, I don't make money from them. In fact I pay money to them, but I'm actually satisfied with this one vendor.Re:While we all hate AOL (Score:5, Informative)
The "most access numbers" statistic is sort of a chimera; you really only need 1 or 2 per metro area, it's the *traffic* on those numbers that's important. That said, I've had excellent experience dialing up to EarthLink in almost every (US) location I've ever been to, and I can almost always get a line by the 2nd call, while my brother across the room tries to dial the local AOL number for half an hour.
Also, as a plus over some of the "local + roaming" others are mentioning in this thread, I don't think EarthLink costs more depending on where you are. I've used a corporate account at several locations and had no complaints from the accounting department about charges.
I'm not a salesperson for EarthLink, but it just seems way preferable to AOL even if they technically have "more" dial up numbers.
Re:Earthlink == Church of $cientology (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, the founder of earthlink, Sky Dayton, is a scientologist, and there are lots of nutjob websites that make lots of unsupported claims, but no evidence that 10% of gross revenue goes to the CoS. In Q2 2002 Earthlink had gross revenues of $335m. Please show me who in the Earthlink management team received $33m, and then gave it to the CoS.
Re:While we all hate AOL (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I don't hate AOL anymore. Most of the reason they were despised by the congoscenti was their members' idiotic presence on Usenet, but now Usenet has become all but unusable anyway, thanks to idiots from dozens of ISPs. All the worthwhile discussion forums are on private mailing lists and moderated web boards (like this one). I simply don't encounter AOL or its users, so they're really irrelevant to me. But I would be sorry to see AOL go out of business, they're a real bellwether of the industry, and if they're gone it won't be a good sign for the markets.
Re:While we all hate AOL (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:While we all hate AOL --- Real Problem is Price (Score:5, Funny)
I'd like to chat with some lemurs.
Re:Lot of good from AOL (Score:3, Interesting)
Once upon a time, I saw a place put Actual Live Techies on the tech support frontlines. Disaster. The customers didn't understand them; they didn't understand the customers. Most callers just gave up after being told, in so many words, "Nothing's wrong. You're the problem."
aol staying afloat (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:aol staying afloat (Score:5, Funny)
sinking real fast now... (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspet that the number of free hours given out by AOL accounts for millions of dollars each month in 'lost' revenue.
I agree with your original comments about how AOL has the touchy feely stuff down pat. They have huge customer service departments to answer questions when the like "how do I send a picture through e-mail" and so on. I have worked in small home-based businesses selling custom computers and internet access and frankly, support is the most troublesome part of it because most users just don't get it. Although I eschew AOL internet and pre built PCs (dell, gateway, etc) for myself, I must unfortunately recommend such solutions for clueless users because it's the only way they're going to get support for answering stupid questions because the people who run small businesses that ship better products don't have the time or money of all of that.
AOL(tw) lost revenue? (Score:5, Funny)
I suspet that the number of free hours given out by AOL accounts for millions of dollars each month in 'lost' revenue.
Does AOL Time Warner "lose" more revenue from free months of AOL service than it loses from piracy of Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema, and Warner Bros. Records products?
Re:aol staying afloat (Score:5, Informative)
When a customer switches from AOL to us [grnet.com], it's never because of our prices, (which are low, compared to the other services available in the area), but because they got fed up with AOL's customer service.
Usually, they'd been with them for years, but when they started having problems, they'd discover AOL's customer service doesn't do much more than give away additional months of service as retainers.
We've never, ever had someone switch to us from AOL because they wanted more powerful access.
We affectionately call them "AOL refugees."
Re:aol staying afloat (Score:3, Interesting)
EG. At my last employer, we had several users who had AOL accounts. When we started allowing remote access to our systems through a VPN, the VPN tunneling software had compatibility issues with AOL's software. Of course, AOL made no effort to correct the issues. (It was pretty much "over the heads" of those doing their phone tech. support anyway.) We enacted a policy that "AOL is unsupported", if people wanted to use our corporate systems remotely.
A couple die-hards still refused to switch. One guy even got a seperate Inet dial-up account just for connecting to us at work, but still used AOL for everything else. The biggest roadblock in the way of ditching AOL? Usually, the kids/family. The employee wanting to switch wasn't willing to make his kids and/or wife suffer through getting a brand new email address, learning everything all over again, etc.
So yeah, right now, some people feel pretty "locked-in" to using AOL -- but the pressure is on them to move away from it. Every time AOL software causes conflicts with other software packages people need, it shrinks their customer base. Every time Microsoft makes it easier to get online without the need of additional software on top, AOL's customer-base shrinks. Every time someone is lured in by the benefits of broadband via their local phone company (who also serves as the ISP), AOL's customer-base shrinks.
can it really die? (Score:4, Interesting)
AOL's Savior? HBO (Score:3, Interesting)
The merger was touted as the beginning of that great "convergence" thing VC's were all abuzz about in the mid 90's
You want convergence? Offer AOL broadband subscribers the ability to stream Sopranos episodes on demand. Sex and the City episodes. Mind of the Married Man.
think about it, they own the client and the transmission technology... it'd be (almost) hack-proof digital distribution.
Re:can it really die? (Score:3, Insightful)
While I hate the interface designed for idiots, AOL does have certain merits, not least the fact it works from practically anywhere in the world. Most of the time I dial up and minimize the thing and fire up Mozilla or Netscape (which have AOL to thank for their existence BTW). In my trips around the US, I really appreciate the ease that it allows me to dial up some local number and avoid being screwed for long distance calls.
As I say I tend to use AOL more like a conventional, but ubiquitous ISP, but there have been many times when I've turned to their content too. AOL has some truly excellent content which, unlike a lot of sites on the web is tailored for immediate access. As one example, I find the recipe site particularly useful.
So really I believe it does have a place. Lot's of people really don't give a crap about learning what PPP is, or other nonsense. They just want to talk to their buddies, chat online or whatever. While AOL is not unique, it does make all this stuff easy and that's the reason people use it. If power users prefer bookmarks and web browsers, then they're probably not the kind of people AOL is pitched at anyway.
AOL (Score:2)
Maeryk
In AOL Voice (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In AOL Voice (Score:5, Funny)
*Obi-Wan voice*
"It's as if millions of voices cried out at once, and then suddenly went silent."
Funny you should mention that... (Score:5, Funny)
This is one of them. For all I know it's still there.
.
.
.
Version: ALL PLATFORMS
Problem Type: Connection -- Modem Dialing
Topic: Other
Symptom: SERVERS DOWN. CALL QUEUE STATUS LIGHT IS SOLID UNWAVERING RED, AS IF 10 MILLION MEMBERS CRIED OUT AT ONCE -- THEN CALLED TECH SUPPORT
Resolution: ABANDON ALL HOPE, GIVE IN TO DESPAIR
Solution: "Sorry, server's down, thank you for calling. Can I interest you in $20 worth of free gas?"
.
.
.
My supervisor got a call from the QA team asking if that was supposed to be a joke or not, if you can believe it.
GMFTatsujin
AOL is a stepping stone (Score:3, Insightful)
Just my dos centavos, though.
Re:AOL is a stepping stone (Score:3, Insightful)
Cheaper broadband will kill AOL (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Cheaper broadband will kill AOL (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm a geek and I've considered getting rid of mine. Most of what I do on the internet is casual surfing and email reading. I currently don't have Flash installed and block popups; in the past I've disabled downloading graphics and don't miss much.
Sometimes I do some work from home (via VNC or PuTTY), but I could do that with dialup, albeit painfully slowly.
Basically I'm paying for broadand to have the convenince of fast downloads occasionally. (OS updates, GNU/Linux and other free downloads, the occasional silly video, etc.) And I used to do that before I had broadband--I'd just start downloading before I went to bed.
If a non-geek is not a heavy Kazaa user I don't see that they would benefit much from broadband.
Besides, some people are afraid of "on all the time" internet.
Not sure about the ditching (Score:5, Interesting)
Not really sensical arguments, but when they start giving answers like that it's hard to get through.
Also, where I work, one of our techs had AOL before starting here. Even after having our dial-ups (free) and our T1, he still kept his AOL for a year or two - would even connect to it over our T1 connection.
Must be nicotine levels or something addictive.
Re:Not sure about the ditching (Score:3, Funny)
Ironic (Score:5, Funny)
scary part (Score:2, Insightful)
We cannot afford to lose AOL (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think I could stand to live in that kind of world. I hope AOL retains its huge lead forever.
Re:We cannot afford to lose AOL (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm tired of coding for the crap that is MS's constantly changing browser standards. I have a web app that works on Netscape 6.x and higher as well as the Mozilla's that spawned them and other Gecko based browsers. However, it only works on IE 5.5. It won't work on 5.0 because the JavaScript and DOM are incomplete and 6.0 renders pages horribly.
If IE is to be the standard, then there will be NO standard.
Wishful thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
But they do have better focus on ease-of-use than almost any software company out there. Hasn't anyone here tried to talk people away from AOL? I have, and they won't leave. It's almost as though they... like it.
What? (Score:5, Funny)
That can't be right! The AOL tech I had helping me troubleshoot a cable-modem connection told me unequivocally that AOL is the Internet.
Re:What? (Score:4, Funny)
Ironic... (Score:3, Troll)
I hope that AOL's woes don't tear down Time/Warner which has many great media properties that will be scattered to the winds if AOL needs to gin up some cash. Over the weekend, I heard analyst say that if AOL had not purchased Time/Warner, the Time/Warner stock would be around $40 and AOL would be around $4. Right now, AOL is at $11.89. I wonder if former Time/Warner stock holders feel like idiots for approving the merger.
Re:Ironic... (Score:5, Interesting)
> AOL had not purchased Time/Warner, the
> Time/Warner stock would be around $40 and AOL
> would be around $4. Right now, AOL is at $11.89.
I have always thought that AOL was never in the business of selling internet access. It was in the business of selling AOL stock.
Because I own parts of a couple of various businesses, I get a pile of free magazines, including "Inc." "Inc." is for "growing businesses" and "entrepreneurs". Lovely people, those. Unfortunately, the writers at "Inc." are horribly out of synch with real live american small businesses. One example of this was the Inc article where it was discussed how one whould "market" a company for sale. Lo and behold, the company's products and business weren't the interesting thing anymore, the company itself was being marketed. AOL should have been listed in this article as the ultimate example of this. It made the owners of AOL billions.
AOL shareholders had no way to justify the valuation of their ISP/online service based on revenues or expected future profits (the traditional model of valuation). The ISP business is hard: it is low margin, price-sensitive, the barriers to entry are low, it is basically unregulated, and you're at the mercy of the ILECs. AOL has all these problems -- it's not just other ISPs.
"Ordinary" dial-up ISPs might sell privately today for $100-$150 a subscriber, and maybe $250-$350 during the bubble. AOL was valued at about $2,500. AOL didn't run from that -- it brayed repeatedly about how its size and scale were so valuable and about how controlling the onramps to the internet was so valuable. But they feared that the game would be up before that value could be locked in.
So...faced with the prospect of having all their paper wealth evaporate, Case et al ginned up the idea of using a stock purchase deal to buy some legitimate assets. This made perfect sense, and I argued with some friends that more tech bubble babies should have done this.
AOL could have bought GM or Chrysler or any number of major banks. Instead, they had to buy something with a tenuous connection to an ISP: a media company with a bunch of cable assets. Bingo. Content and a means to deliver (at some as-yet-undetermined date) high speed access and new services.
As with most ill-conceived mergers of large companies, the big thing was "synergy." If you are unfamiliar with it, "synergy" is the modern financial philosopher's stone that auto-magically turns horseshit into honey. (Look for HP/Compaq to have either horseshit or honey coming out of its ears sometime in the next couple of years -- I suspect you know where my bet is).
AOL essentially pimped itself so well that it fooled the stodgy old dorks at Time Warner (who feared and still fear that technology will impoverish them) that not only would AOL save them, it would make everyone filthy rich. It didn't. In essence, AOL gave some (not so) magic beans in exchange for the Time Warner cash cows. Time Warner was fleeced. They probably lost more in the stock market bubble than anyone else in the world.
I wonder if former Time/Warner stock holders feel like idiots for approving the merger.
What do you think?
Note: I have no problems with how any of this went down -- everyone involved had smart advisors and lawyers and accountants. Time Warner people aren't sympathetic victims -- they just made a horrible decision about a business that they just really didn't understand, IMHO. I do not consider this to be an indictment of AOL or Time Warner. It's just an interesting story to me.
guac-foo
WHAT?? (Score:5, Funny)
I thought AOL was based on the idea that people need a never-ending supply of drink coasters.
Re:WHAT?? (Score:4, Funny)
Drink coasters? How un-creative!
I chop up my AOL CDs and use packing tape to create a mosaic on the doors of my wardrobe cabinet! If only I had a digicam I would link to a picture of it for you.
And on that note, my (former) bank once sent me a co-branded AOL cd (with their logo and AOL's logo) and then did a follow-up call a few weeks later asking me about it. I was sure to describe to the girl in great detail why a relationship with AOL dirtied the bank's reputation (this is one of many reasons why they are my former bank). Also, when asked how I used the CD, I described in great detail how I cut it up and used it in my mosaic and she entered it into the records. I wish I could have seen the demographics statistics peoples' faces when they tried to add *that* to a pre-defined category!
Re:WHAT?? (Score:4, Funny)
|x| Customer is satisfied with AOL CD promotion and continues using it.
Do people actually use CD's as drink coasters? (Score:3, Insightful)
Keyword: CHEAPER (Score:4, Interesting)
Especially now that no one has any money [sfgate.com] to spare on AOL pleasantries like half-assed chatroom censorship and 50% of bandwidth going to ads, AOL is dying. Expect A0L to lose more ground over the coming months... considering their future next to cable and DSL access, for all intents and purposes AOL is dead.
Re:Keyword: CHEAPER (Score:5, Funny)
I found him! The origional author of the '*BSD Is Dying' troll!
not a chance (Score:5, Insightful)
as long there are still enough computer illiterate aol will stay.
and as long as aol funds the mozilla team and winamp, it should stay - it is still the lesser evil.
Re:not a chance (Score:3, Insightful)
Become Profitable before splitting (Score:2, Interesting)
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I though AOL was based on the idea of a super-BBS that people could use, in the days of Prodigy and Compuserve, well before the Internet was remotely available to Joe 486.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Precisely. In fact, the first experience I had with AOL was when some guy was touting it as "way better" than the local BBS's we were all dialing up to. We thought he was a freak for paying for access. Oh, how times change.
The article goes on to make the excellent point that this was always the real point of AOL, until it got taken over by MBAs in the mid-late 90s and they started implementing the "herd of eyeballs for sale" mentality In fact, this might be the *real* root cause of AOL's problems: a shift of focus from custom to advertiser, a plummet in the ad rates, and no corresponding reason to stick around.
Ultimately I think AOL will be doomed even if they can turn it around and create an excellent customer experience, because as much as it's "a halfway house" between people and the internet, it's a full-service one: it takes a lot of resources to maintain community features people like. As they shift to lower-margin broadband connections, I think they'll just be squeezed out. Unless broadband wholesale prices are regulated *way* down.
As much as I hate to draw the parallel, sites like SlashDot are actually starting to fill the need that AOL used to in this regard, albeit on a smaller scale. Especially with the new friend/foe system and the journaling, all we need is "/.IM" for this to be a full-featured nerd community a-la AOL forums. Of course, slashdot isn't immune from the need to make a profit, and I'm not entirely clear on how they're proceeding towards that end. Guess time will tell. But it seems like AOL might not be a significant part of the picture for much longer.
Bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
They're right you know (Score:5, Insightful)
That was the first instant chat that I'd ever seen. It was a GUI IRC, which has a lot of pluses to it. It was basically the first internet that most people could use without having a whole lot of background in the area.
Now fast forward 10 years.
Now you've got everyone and their Uncle working as an ISP. Most companies have usable products to get online. The internet is a much friendlier place, it's pretty, it's readable, not nearly as much tech speak on the pages. It's become another form of TV. (or at least it's trying to)
The biggest problem is that you don't NEED AOL anymore. They are great to get started, like diapers. Then you grow up and move on. AOL's problem is that less and less people need hand holding to get online, as that's gotten easier. At the same time they face some stiff competition, and the pool of brand new users is drying up.
They need to figure out a way to get some fresh meat to stock their coffers.
Re:They're right you know (Score:5, Funny)
Are you insinuating that AOL users frequently piss themselves?
Re:They're right you know (Score:3, Funny)
No, I think (s)he was alluding to "what AOL is full of"
S
Re:They're right you know (Score:5, Insightful)
Only when they see what competitors are charging.
I just don't get it anymore. I have people coming into the store complaining of poor access speeds through dialup. Fair enough, perhaps dialup is best suited for your need. But then I find out that some of them have purchased a second line. That is when I scratch my head and ask why the hell they are not using cable or DSL.
Let's do the math:
Extra phone line ($~20) + ISP fee (~$20) = $40/month!
Or the alternative: Our town has DSL and Cable Modems priced at $30/month for 384kbit or $40 for 768kbit cable.
Let's say for a minute that you don't have a second phone line. Fine, but your AOL/MSN/Earthlink account is costing you $22/month for service anyway. Why not pay the extra $8 for broadband DSL or Cable?! It's worth it. Really!
I also love these people that buy the latest and greatest 2.5GHz computer with a DVD burner and half a gig of RAM only to bring it home and plug a phone line into it. Ugh! What a shame.
Mmmmmmmm, dialup!
This is true... (Score:5, Interesting)
What was left to me was AOL, so I signed up for that 1025 hours, and then did some shopping around online for another internet provider... I eventually ended up with a wireless internet service provider that uses the Motorola Canopy [motorola.com] system, which gives me sustained performance comparable to a decent cable or DSL service, plus even more nice things like static IP and RDNS allocation.
Needlessly to say, then it was "Goodbye, AOL!" ... "The call" was pretty funny to me, since I had (ab)used their service to leap to a competitor. The rep on the other end tried in vain to convince me to keep my AOL account, and even tried to use the argument that "a dynamic ip is good because it's more secure." I got tired in the end and basically told him to cut the crap and just cancel my account.
For those total non-geeks (Score:5, Insightful)
People of my parents generation often don't have the technical understanding to setup and use more complicated solutions. Instead they buy a 'computer as appliance' and slap on M$N (shudder) or AOL, and learn that instead of trying to understand all the layers involved.
The GUI is challenging enough, let alone configuring the network, setting up IMAP, trying to figure out why the modem script doesn't work, figuring out which ISP to use, and navigating support mazes to figure out what's really wrong.
What they really want is a way to get connected to their children where they can send pictures, and exchange notes. AOL and MSN, and even Earthlink do that for them as package deals.
It may not be the cheapest, but they're not poor, and they'd rather spend their time fishing, cooking, and hanging with their friends, than upgrading their DSL driver to version 2.8.
Re:For those total non-geeks (Score:4, Funny)
Hmph. REAL geeks remember to balance their parentheses.
AOL has its place (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, while they do open the floodgates for any idiot to get online, put up a cheesy webpage, and harass the knowledgeable, they also make it easier to set up filters for my hotmail account. I have all aol.com addy's blocked.
"C"
Re:AOL has its place (Score:5, Funny)
But what about your poor mot...oh, I get it now.
I am even supprised it last thing long (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway the vast majority of AOL users were idiots and I was truly embarrased by having a @aol.com in my email address when posting to a unix usenet group for obvious reasons. Anyway I switched as soon as the internet boomed and I could finally pick a good ISP. I figured aol would slowly die as the internet became more popular.
The only true benifit of AOL was that everything was centrally organized and you did not have to search to find specific information. However yahoo now has groups that relate to about ever interest known to man and the search engines have improved and can be catagorized.
Anyway it seems the only true benifit of AOL is IM and chat.
The internet is truly a superior platform now and the world runs on it. Its time aol became a portal like yahoo and an isp. THey can no longer have two different online platforms. Its expensive to maintain and the AOL network is the dying platform while the internet is the one thats growing and standard.
Easy way to "save" AOL (Score:3, Insightful)
(1) Create a straight PPP dialup product, comes with a modern mail client and web browser (hey! Nescape/Mozilla might work...).
(2) Charge $5-7 per month LESS than current subscription rates. Yep, $15-$18 per month range.
So now, they have a streamlined faster product for those who want it, available at a competetive price. Meanwhile, there's still the implication that there is value added for the whole AOL package (which there probably is, speed issues and pop-ups aside), and they can still sell to users who like those features and/or need the training wheels. Simple and appealing. They might even get new users.
(And anybody who says ??? and PROFIT!! deserves to be the next sniper victim. Don't go there. It's not funny anymore.)
My own AOL-quitting experience (Score:4, Funny)
So I found her an (half the price) ISP, showed her how to do email, surf the web, etc.
One week later, "I'm switching back."
Reason?
It's not pretty . And she missed the voices .
I know!
I am obliged to mention that my SIL is not an idiot.
AOL _is_ an Internet Company (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think this analogy is fair. AOL is definitely an Internet company, it's just that their "online presence" is so huge that they can justifiably call themselves their own little Internet (so to speak) even though none of their content is really available to the general Internet community. Hundreds of other Internet companies have tried to do with web sites what AOL has done with their business, namely the ultimate portal. Even the most successful of these attempts (e.g. Yahoo!, MSN, Netscape) has no where near the content, usability, and breadth that AOL has achieved through their proprietary software and business partnerships. No one advertises Yahoo! keyword "The WB".
I ditched AOL years ago but AOL does honestly have an interface to and navigation context with an enormous amount of general content which cannot be rivaled by anyone else.
Define "failure". (Score:4, Insightful)
Salon comments on AOL's Viablity? (Score:3, Insightful)
Steve Case made a brilliant move with Time Warner. He used his hyper inflated stock value to buy a company with real sustainable assets. Sure they have experianced massive deflation, just like ALL internet related stocks. But they now have enourmous resources and infrastructure to leverage.
AOL is not for geeks, it's for new users, non-techies and grandma's. And there are a lot of Grandma's out there.
Actually, AOL predates the WWW by years (Score:5, Insightful)
http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Fall2000/McAtee
AOL simply finds itself in the position many online services found themselves in with the advent of the WWW, without an actual raison d'etre, and managed, somehow, to reposition themselves as the "hallway" where others failed to do the same.
So while I believe the author is correct in that they're fighting a battle they will ultimately lose, the premise that they somehow positioned themselves for this is faulty.
They were originally based on the premise that *ordinary* people would pay for online services, and for a number of years were the *only* such service available to such ordinary people.
The "Information Superhighway" didn't happen to be built throught their "town," nor was its future existence predictable in the first place. Much as many ghost towns in the midwest were "created" by the particular route the railroad companies happened to pick, such railroad companies not being predictable when the towns were founded a century before on perfectly solid river routes.
KFG
AOL will stay around (Score:3, Insightful)
And they are happy with that. Computers are not the end all, be all of life that they are to some of the people here. These other people prefer to go out golfing, take the kids to ball games or whatever, then just come home, take 5 minutes to check email, and then turn off the computer. They are the majority of internet users out there, and they are why AOL will likely never fold.
Time Warner gripes about AOL merger (Score:5, Interesting)
email sent by Robert Hughes, disgruntled Time art critic, to AOLTimeWarner macher Gerry Levin, quoted by Tina Brown: [timesonline.co.uk]
How can I convey to you the disgust which your name awakens in me begins Hughes to LevinThe merger with Warner was a catastrophe. But the hitherto unimagined stupidity, the blind arrogance of your deal with Case simply beggars description. How can you face yourself knowing how much history, value and savings you have thrown away on your mad, ignorant attempt to merge with a wretched dial-up ISP? . . . I dot know what advice you have to offer, but I have some for you. Buy some rope, go out the back, find a tree and hang yourself. If you had any honour you would.Seems like some of the Time Warner employees are feeling some strong emotions about their management's attempt to hitch themselves to a sinking ISP...
Ominous Signs (Score:4, Funny)
Be afraid.
It's a conspiracy! (Score:4, Interesting)
Let me give you all a piece of economical trivia: Q.) How does a company get big? A.) A lot of customers pay for a service or product it provides.
It's true for AOL, it's true for Microsoft, it's true for Starbuck's, it's true for Walmart, it's true for Disney, it's true for the RIAA, etc etc etc.
Have these companies done less than ethical stuff to get that way? Sure. Whatever. At some point, people still had to voluntarily give them money. At that same point, most had to be pleased with the service or product.
In other words: You cannot build a business solely on thievery and deceit. You cannot just build a monopoly one day. You cannot just build a coffeeshop next to an existing one and turn on a magic mind beam to make customers zomby-walk into your store. There's something enticicing for them.
AOL's not everybody's favorite ISP. So what? It does it's job. A.) They make it easy for one to get on the net, B.) They offer a price that seems (emphasize SEEMS) reasonable. C.) They don't make the user feel like it's a huge technical challenge to get up and running. There are better deals out that, but that doesn't negate what AOL provides. They didn't get big by playing games with people's credit cards or manipulating minutes or whatever the other overly-creative people have come up with.
Just chill. A corp can't get big by being 100% bastard, 30% is about as high as you can get away with.
I don't know (Score:3, Insightful)
sheesh, wrong move?
I can't tell. On the one hand, that puke of an app AOL is gone from the system, and they have a snappy connection.
On the other hand, I have 2 people who call me when they click the wrong area, and the window goes behind Outlook Express, and they can't find it (yeah, I know, minimized, but they don't know that). Ruined my golf game on Sunday (miniture golf, that is
On AOL, they knew what they were doing. I thought I was saving headaches when they moved over. I don't know about them, but my headaches have increased.
AOL is still needed. Painful, but true. AOL is nice for users who still don't know what a power button is. I hope it survives as an 'entrance' to the net, and nothing more.
Just check your web server logs... (Score:5, Interesting)
Jan 1 2000: 24.97%
Jan 1 2001: 17.08%
Jan 2002: 12.32%
Feb 2002: 11.89%
Mar 2002: 11.41%
Apr 2002: 11.42%
May 2002: 11.26%
Jun 2002: 10.36%
Jul 2002: 8.22%
Aug 2002: 10.16%
Sep 2002: 9.97%
Oct 14 2002: 8.12%
AOL is still holding the #1 slot, but not by much. In January of this year, it had a 6% advantage over the #2 spot, now held by attbi.com. Now, that margin is down to about 2.5%.
Re:Just check your web server logs... (Score:4, Interesting)
AOL MAIL (Score:3, Informative)
"he's off 'is rocker" I can hear as you are now pressing the "reply button" ready to flame me for such treasonous talk. However, I would ask you this:
for $23.95 a month, does ANY other ISP offer you 500+ mails, each with a 16MB attachment?
"what do you need that malarkey for" you may ask. Among the obvious statement of "thats how Email service SHOULD BE", there is another reason.
I make freelance 3D Animations for clients. These files are often huge. Often the clients are computer-unsavvy. Setting up an FTP site is impossible for them - it's all I can do to get them to understand how to decompress a RAR/ACE file... or I will simply send them 16Mb edited versions of the videos I make.
I cannot afford some special business Email from AT&T or Verizon... especially when AOL's is $23.95 a month. Webbased harddrives are too slow, and depend on a broadband connection - many of my clients are still on 56K modems. But, they all have AOL.
There is a lot to hate about AOL, to be sure. But they STILL have some wonderful services for the money.... I can't understand why they don't play up their email service, though.
YRU Anti-AOL (Score:4, Insightful)
Two AOL users walk into a bar... (Score:3, Funny)
Will people "graduate" from AOL? (Score:3, Funny)
HOW TO SAVE AOL: I'm going to say it again.... (Score:5, Insightful)
AOL is sinking because it's focus is still getting "technophobe grandma" online. That's messed up. (Hell I'm sure it's still the leader there, but grandma is either online or doesn't care at this point).
AOL should focus on providing all the services WE AS GEEKS take for ganted.
AOL will work it's ass off to be a broadband provider, but that isn't it's true strength anyway. (It makes things easier for AOL though). AOL is about "value added" and it has to add value for me to pay the "bring your own service" plan.
That's the only way it will survive.
rumors of death greatly exaggerated (Score:4, Insightful)
But they added another MILLION subscribers in the last 9 months. And they project $850 MILLION dollars in positive cash flow in 2003. They have a broadband problem, and it will probably cut into their margins. But they can solve that problem and may retain and continue to add to their customer base. That is a long ways from "You've got bankruptcy!"
I hope AOL Stays in business... (Score:5, Funny)
There is a niche for AOL (Score:4, Insightful)
Something that AOL could do would be to cut deals with a lot of these providers, to get a discounted rate with these providers. And yes, a lot of these premium services would be very likely to be willing to give a discount in return for the number of potential subscribers AOL could toss in their direction.
From the customer end, AOL gives discounted rates for various premimum services or even effectively free under the base rate. And they give centralized billing as well for all these subscription services. Just go to a single area and checkmark off what you want and don't want.
AOL could even offer caching for these services as well, which also benefits both from the provider and and from the customer end. That's probably how they could negotiate a reduced rate "Give us the content at a lower fee and we'll be eating the bandwidth costs on our end". And the AOL customers are pulling this stuff off of AOL servers then.
Yes, the Internet is all about eliminating the middlemen, but the fact is that middlemen have their uses. Of course I doubt that AOL is going to see this until its too late.
Simplify! (Score:4, Insightful)
And why exactly do they need two instant message protocals? Let one go (ICQ!!) to the OSS community.
And it would be REALLY nice if they had a "thin client" (might actually exist and I'm not aware) that allows customers to use their pipe without installing all their bloated software. I mean, they are the broadest reaching ISP on the planet.
~LoudMusic
The reason there going bankrupt... (Score:3, Funny)
AOL advocating behavior outlawed by DMCA?!? (Score:4, Interesting)
"I'm not sending you a file that you listen to later," Kimball says, describing the service. "I'm getting you right now, while we talk. I know you like the Stones, and you're in my life, and as we listen to the song I say, 'Remember the time we went to the concert three years ago?'"
Is this not a violation of copyright law? Even if the sender own a *legit* copy of the CD and ripped the Stones song, isn't sharing it in digital form illegal since the listener could also save the song?
Or does this come under the realm of illegal broadcasting? Does the sender need to pay CARP fees? Is this addressed in the article on Webcasting from earlier today?
OK, so who wants to bring AOL up on charges...
AOL will be fine (Score:4, Interesting)
AOL doesn't really seem to be having this problem, given that their user base is up to nearly 40 million people and growing every day. As for broadband competition, most AOL users who go broadband just switch to the "roll-your-own" service that only costs $9.95 a month, and has way less overhead for AOL.
AOL's real problem at the moment is the loss of advertising dollars that came after the dot-com busts, when companies realized that consumers tend to ignore online advertising, which doesn't really matter in the long run, because all the TW money will offest things in the long run.
Give AOL a few years for AOL to be absorbed into TW, and for all the idiots who bought AOL at stupid prices to get over their losses, and the company will look just as good as it always did.
AOL
World's Slowest Heartbeat (Score:3, Insightful)
Incorrect Assumptions (Score:3, Insightful)
It was never really an Internet company. AOL was based on the idea that people needed to live in a halfway house while they became accustomed to the Net.'...If folks can get a better, faster, cheaper online experience by ditching AOL, they'll do it in a heartbeat.
There is no doubt that this is what aol has become but you are incorrect in how it came about. AOL truly never was an Internet company as you say... but neither was it based on your halfway house idea. This is bullocks.
It was not started as a buffer for the internet.. it as started without the internet... a subscription bbs. These things really did exist.... The internet killed the BBS.. aol is just hanging on longer then most.
Less promotion, lower prices? (Score:3, Insightful)
The dial-up ISP I used, access4less.net, only charged $6 a month. Juno charges $10. I think AT&T charges about $14.
MSN charges $23, but they only get away with that by giving away $400 off the price of new computer.
So maybe AOL isn't price competitive anymore?
fear as a marketing tool (Score:3, Insightful)
They have been very successful in particular with older, non-technical folks. For example, both my parents and in-laws use AOL and every time I suggest that they could get everything they need on the internet for less money and less hassle by dumping AOL, they look at me like I'm insane.
What bugs me the most about AOL is that they disguise who their true customers are. They want people to believe that when they sign up for an account, they are the customer. In fact, those poor schmucks are simply fodder for the legions of advertisers and commercial interests that are AOL's true customers.
Re:I hate to say it... (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know where you surf, buddy, but I am using mozilla every day and maybe 1% of the sites doesn't work.
Re:I hate to say it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Alternatively, I have found thousands of sites that bombard IE with popup ads, and Ad-aware reports that much more nefarious activity is happening as well.
In this comparison, it is blatantly obvious that IE is the inferior product which fails almost completely in its attempts to meet my expectations. If AOL can provide a web browser that does not include 1,001 ways to violate my security, require third party software to repair the damage, and inundate me with advertisements, then that is a marvelous advantage for them and for their users.
If, however, you are more concerned with preserving advertisers revenues and consider the end users' rights and privacy to be an inconvenience, then your comment is right on.
Long live microsoft trolls, eh?
Re:I hate to say it... (Score:3, Insightful)
What makes you think an end user running Mozilla isn't likely to attribute a site that renders improperly to its webmaster? If 99% of the other sites he visits show up properly, why would the 1% of the sites that don't suddenly become the browser's fault? The average user has run across enough sh*tty websites that the incompetence of a site developer isn't regarded as an impossibility.
As for site developers, the only site developers Mozilla is likely to piss off are the lazy fscks who can't be bothered to create clean HTML and CSS. They're the l4m3rz who read Teach Yourself FrontPage in 24 Hours [amazon.com] (or something similar) and think that makes them "HTML programmers" (as if HTML were a programming language). I doubt the Mozilla developers are losing too much sleep over them.