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Time Warner Finds AOL Email Inadequate

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the so-easy-to-use dept.

DragonMagic writes "MSNBC.com carries this article describing the woes at many of Time Warner's companies after AOL's merger, where the internet giant tried to migrate them all to AOL's email services. From crashing software and attachment limits, to missing and misdirected mail, companies such as Time Magazine had to go so far as to have hard copies rushed before deadlines by cab! Plans are now to retreat from this forced migration and return to the services previously held by each company."

4 of 351 comments (clear)

  1. No Real Suprise Here by lysurgon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've always been somewhat mystified at the way AOL has been able to sell inferior services (slow service, high downtime, poor chat/email feature) to millions of users. Testiment to the power of marketing I suppose. On the other hand, that "community" stuff is a real thing...

    Of course, now that they're in the business arena where a few hours of downtime means more than wating till tomorrow to send that email to grandma, and lo and behold they just can't cut it. MSN has the same problems. No credible business can put up with their downtimes and outages.

    Now the executive level is beginning to understand how important these issues are. Someone could make a nice bundle of money by creating a credible business-class isp that doesn't suck (e.g. worldcom... generation d? yeah right).

    --


    Howard Dean for president
  2. Re:Obviously no one paid attention by TedCheshireAcad · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This seems to be a classic example of if-it-aint-broke-don't-fix-it syndrome. TW's previous system seemed to handle their needs, and after the merger, they switched to AOL? Does anyone see the logic behind this? If you have a system that gets the job done without complaints, don't change it.

    ~my $.02

  3. E-mail for magazine proofs and large files? by willith · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm not sure which is worse--that the employees were forced to use AOL e-mail at work, or that top level people at Time were using e-mail to send final page proofs that were apparently of a massive size.

    Do these people not have FTP? Is their IT department asleep at the wheel?

  4. Re:Your classic case of Executive Shielding by Jay+L · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How many people here thing that Mr. Pittman ever had a problem with his AOL mail? I'd bet dollars to pesos that anyone at AOL with a capital "C" in their title has their e-mail running off their own custom-built server.

    How much you want to bet? It ain't so. They run the AOL client and read mail off the AOL servers, and have ever since AOL migrated off QuickMail around 1989. The problem is not with the AOL mail system per se, but with a total system that just doesn't fit together. See my post above.

    Jay "Chief Architect begins with a capital C too" Levitt