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The Sinking Ship that is AOL
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.'"
there's alot of non-techies out there that can't see doing anything but AOL. AOL has (at least historically) had the touchy-feel stuff down pat. There's also all the people who don't want to change their email addresses. AOL has more going for it than the person who originated this post thinks.
AOL, whether you hate them or not, is the primary (some might say only) obstacle preventing Microsoft from owning the Internet. If they were to go away, "MSN" and "The Internet" would become synonymous. Is that what you want?
I don't think I could stand to live in that kind of world. I hope AOL retains its huge lead forever.
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when most non geeks think of aol they think of an "easy internet expirience", although most of them don't even know what internet is. they use aim, they use aol email and they don't want to go any further, hell they don't even know there is more than aol. such people don't care about the speed or price because they don't use it too often.
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.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
AOL was based on the idea that people needed to live in a halfway house while they became accustomed to the Net.
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.
...
I'm sorry, but that sounds exactly right to me. I still remember when I first went online. It was through AOL. Why? Because they were the only easy way to get online at the time. Any idiot could pull a CD out of their mailbox and be online within hours.
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.
I'll admit it, I subscribe to AOL. (Internet acces only, of course) As a true geek (tm, perhaps I should be thrown in stocks and pilloried. Truth is there are LOTS of people out there who need training wheels, permanent training wheels. Personally I got deathly sick of [unable to display image] when my AOL friends didn't understand the differenct between embedding and attaching. Now those folks can send me stuff without me having to do lecture on attacments.
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.
It's long been an easy way for the clueless to get online with a minimum of pain or actually having to learn anything. I definitely plan to get my mother online via AOL so I can pawn her whiny phone calls off on the poor AOL staffers who are paid to deal with the functionally computer illiterate. It's what they're there for. Since there will always be newbies and the terminally cluefree, there will always be a market for products like AOL. It's ultimate niche may not be the massive media-infotainment-merchandising one-stop shop that they've aspired to, but it they focus on their original & enduring strenth, they will remain viable, although much reduced.
;)
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"
If MSN wins, then IE wins (or has it?)
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.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
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 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.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
McDonald's isn't in the burger business - it's in the softdrink business. McDonald's is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) resellers of Coke. Where's more profit?
$1 burger that costs 35 cents to make?
$1.19 drink and 9 cents of syrup/water?
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