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Time Warner Properties May Only Be Available Through AOL
ryman writes "According to MSNBC, Time Warner is considering making its online content available without charge only to AOL subscribers. Sounds like a desperate move to redeem AOL, but this will have to take on a big toll on its online readership."
Say what you will about AOL, but it represents buzillions of peoples Internet access, AND from the standpoint of a CONSUMER it's not bad.
... is madness. What's needed is syndication: why can't I pay my ISP a few bucks a month for access to a package of properties of my choosing? TW's advertisers should revolt over this.
Does anyone look at corporate websites anymore? The only national company whose site I ever look at is Microsoft, and that's only for MSDN stuff and security patches. Time Warner? Please. If I need to see what time Will and Grace is on, I can check the paper.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
its about the only thing that made AOL popular when the net first emerged. this is just a last ditch effort, shoot the horse already.
They should start out by just making it ad free through AOL. Then move to allowing extra features through AOL (premium stories, free music streaming). Then finally move to exclusive access.
Secondly, they gotta offer direct PPP access as an alternative. No way I'm using their bloated client, no matter how many features they stuff into it.
This was long coming, since the announcement of the merger. Almost immediately we was a revival or the "AOL keyword" in addition to the URL in all Time-Warner owned media. Before that, the "AOL keyword" was nearly gone.
The recent announcement suggests that this has not worked, hence the need for more radical measures. If AOL has critical mass, they can pull it off and make people pay AOL fees just to download, say, Britney's latest CD, or cool Star Wars trailers. If they don't have enough critical mass, all they will achive is to bring down the once mighty TimeWarner online properties along with AOL.
So the real question is, does AOL have critical mass to carve out a proprietary section of the Web?
Personally, they should do it. It might save more interesting online news sources like Salon. :)
sujal
politics, food, music, life: FatMixx
This could actually be a good thing. Pay a premium for advertising-free premium content. It's not all that different from paying for premium television channels (HBO, Cinemax, etc.) on your cable or satellite system.
If they're smart, they'll also make this available to non-AOL users through the Netscape Network as well, so all you need is their "Screen Name Service" and a browser to sign on. Price this fairly -- say, $4.95 a month -- and they might garner a good number of users. It's actually working pretty well so far for Real Networks; why not expand things a bit?
With ad revenues for web sites dwindling rapidly, this is probably inevitable. And I think it's ok.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Who is going to get AOL just for TW content? Anyone?
At the risk of sounding obvious, the answer to "who" is anyone who is interested in TW content. If you have someone who likes People magazine, then they might sign up for that.
That's like asking, "who is going to pay for a magazine subscription". Anyone who likes that magazine.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I don't know if anyone would buy AOL just for Time/Warner content, but it does sweeten the pot for some people.
The people that I know who are on AOL are there for stuff that's not available on the net at large -- chatrooms, the parental controls on IMs that allow kids to chat with their friends, without worrying about predators, etc.
I know parents who buy AOL even though they have broadband and home networks, for just this reason.
This move would just make AOL that much nicer for the people who subscribe. By itself, it's not enough to swing anyone. But when you add it to the pile of AOL features that people like, it contributes to the cumulative effect.
Since online readers of Time or People don't do the company much good anyway, it seems like a good move to me.
I could see them doing something similar with online movies in the future -- bringing out stuff first for AOL customers, or whatever.
One of the real issues that may poke it's ugly head in all this is the value of TWAOL's content. How much is it worth? If you ask the executives, they probably can put a value on it. Is the value realistic? Maybe we will see.
I really think this is something that needs to happen, and it's about time. Content has a percieved value in old economy companies which is based on physical distribution mechanisms.
Right now the value of content is not known in my my mind. I don't think anyone else really knows either.
Just look at Salon.com. They, probably more than any other company, are in a battle to define the correct value of their content. At some point we need to progress beyond 1980's paradigms of content value in large media companies as well. Salon.com is in the thick of it as we are reading this. We see headlines almost weekly about their quest to break even, much less turn a profit. Salon has a problem that online content is their only product. AOLTW has other lines of business and markets to help keep them afloat. Maybe now it is AOL Time Warner's turn to test the waters and discover, or at least try to, the real value of their content.
I don't see this as a bad thing.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
Most of the smart folks here will comment about Good Business Practices. As a concept, this one is flawed: AOL's membership is dwindling, and it's ability to enticing new users is limited as the general internet is really the goal for a growing number of people.
SO, this obviously looks like a piggy-back maneuver, not a public release of content. What everyone here already knows is that once digital, information leaks everywhere. Anything resembling a fence around it is surely to be a PITA to manage.
Example: I have AOL on broadband. I grab a movie and put it in the P2P until I see it's been downloaded a dozen times. Then I remove it from my library and try again. I'm one of 100 people doing this every week, for a few months. Hooray, useless content everywhere, then AOL's content pipe is shut down and TW is angry. End of story.
How do we know that MSNBC would not try something similar? They seem to be doing everything they can in their competition with AOL (butterfly stickers in NYC).
Wouldn't this be considered a monopolistic behavior where they are using their power in an abusive way?
This sounds like the days when AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServ were battling for who had the best proprietary systems and could milk $5/hr out of their poor customers with little/no alternatives. Of course now is the time when if I want info on a news story I do a google news search and get about a dozen or more free sources for any important story. Doomed to fail, guess the Time Warner guys got snookered by the internet bubble and pictures of stock options dancing in their heads.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
To see what exactly the AOLTW empire owns, check out Who Owns What
The greening of the net began years ago. Frankly, I can't see how sites like Mapquest, CNN.com, etc. can afford to keep giving away services for free. Face it guys, the Internet as an ad medium fell flat on it's face. Content costs money, and corporations are in business to make money, not give it away. In a way, the net hase become a big disappointment to me. Maybe I bought into the hype, I don't know. But one thing I do know is that I miss the net's good 'ol days. Unfortunately, they're gone....forever.
I'm a company, I've made some content and I only want people who are "members" and "customers" of my company to see this contaent..why cant I do this?
Well, I'm certainly no fan of CNN, and wouldn't mind a bit if its web presence evaporated as a result of this foolishness. That having been said...
As a company, you can do whatever you want under the law. If you start a company under the pretense that you are providing "free" (cnn.com had a ton of ads the last time I went there) news content on the Internet, develop a huge readership, and then start charging for the service (through AOL membership or otherwise), nothing is legally wrong with that.
However, don't be surprised if the rest of the world thinks you are a flaming scumbag for doing so. The last time I checked, my right to think that, say that, and gather a group together to discuss it were constitutionally protected.
From what I read in the WSJ this morning the thought is to provide all the content to AOL members and teaser content to the web-browsing public. Ideally this would be at no additional charge to AOL members as a way to offer added value and bring on more subscribers.
One major reason AOLTW stock tanked is that subscriber growth dramatically decreased. Bringing that back may be just the Wall Street elixir they need. I'd love to see them implement digital access to more Time Warner properties. How about streaming/downloadable access to previous season episodes of the Sopranos, for example?
And if it is no additional charge for AOL members then it is $15 a month for you - the price of AOL's "Bring Your Own Access" plan.
A while back, I naively applied for a job doing tech support for AOL. Turns out they were just looking for "Saves" people, who are the guys that take cancellation calls and beg and implore people to stay with AOL. I'm glad I didn't get the job. The tour they give of the place reinforces something that most people smart enough not to use AOL already know: AOL's customers are not the 30+ million people paying for access. AOL's customers are the advertisers that are told, "We have over thirty million captive people you can reach, whether through popups, banner ads, sales pitches on tech support calls, and email!" Lately this business model has bitten AOL and now Time Warner in the ass. Considering how many other sources there are for getting information, I think this will heavily dilute the value of the offered properties. There's not going to be enough value to entice any significant amount of people to either subscribe to AOL or pay the fee for the content. Also, most people who use AOL aren't using it because they can get exclusive content. They're using it because they see AOL as the internet. This isn't going to bump subscriber numbers significantly either up or down. I don't see a huge amount of risk for AOL/TW, but I don't see any real payoff either.
That's funny, I know plenty of people who use AOL because they have local dialups all over the world, and sell local services in many countries besides the US. I have friends in Japan, for example, who subscribe to AOL Japan.
The only other company I know of that has local dialups all over the world is AT&T Global Network which is the one I use, because I don't want to risk installing AOL on my machine even though they have much better coverage.
p.s. there are foreign-language versions of TW's popular magazines like Time, etc. So, the argument that the print magazines are US-only is not true.
I think it's times like this (when Corps get greedy/scared) when we all need to pay attention to what's going on. Look at a cat falling into a tub of water as its claws rear up in panic to grab a hold of anything it can, to try and stay out of the water. Naturally, the cat is going to hurt someone if it gets a hold of them. Naturally the cat is going to get wet because they are totally scatterbrained at the moment - without any sobriety or common sense to spare. (and no uncommon sense to spare either!)
/. if we could pull them away from whatever they are doing in their cubicle!
Big business is no different than that poor panicked kitty when the boardrooms start changing their tack, in an effort to leverage people into buying into their crap. Why would anyone in their right mind pay for a service when they could find the same info for free? Likely the same people who wear I'm with Stoopid T-shirts (or perhaps those standing NEXT to them!!).
Let some other sucker pay for news. And why should we rush to companies with cash in hand? They provide a service to make money and, like RIAA, they make all too much of it if you ask me, and they spend it all trying to influence courts and politics.
Another total insight is that any society is only as advanced as the time it takes to find a given fact, and you could rate any age of society where this same is true - that the time it takes to find out a fact and understand it is directly proportionate to the level of advancement of the given society in time (at this time). I could go really off the wall and say that the next logical step for human advancement is the abolishment of corporations and finance, since the very act of resource hogging is Neolithic and an impetus to human advancement! But to refine and restrain my argument, I will instead suggest that on a given trajectory, human finance is likely a cultural necessity and although future exploits be damned, eventually it will end and become replaced by either some other exploit or some unilateral benefit (unlikely given human nature).
Corporations wish to slow down the transfer of information because the people who are now in control of the world are mostly getting old themselves, or at the whim of those who are aging!
Put in stop-gaps so we can keep up! Add some more costs and measures to make 'em line up to hand them money for services we don't even provide! (CNN could post something, Time picks it up and the non-AOL users over at time have to pay? That's nonsense. And what about Reuter's/AP?!?)
What companies need to adopt now is a policy that allows them to save customers money and yet generate money at the same time. Give and take is essential for market growth; try selling that to a boardroom AND keep the evil twists out of the mix! Customer breaks have to be unilateral or they don't work out in the long run. Society is getting smarter. Give a bunch of stuff away for free, but charge for extra pampering / better bandwidth / services / and accessories. Or maybe don't charge?
I challenge some philanthropist to design a company that runs perfectly without charging anyone money for goods and service. (And at the same time refrain from cult or criminal status!!!) I bet if someone ever invented that company, they would be the next Ben Franklin because that company if entered into competition with other companies would likely crush all competition in existence today.
All it would take is fifty people who decided to adhere to certain principles of non-profit competition with the end goal being free provision via science, technology et al.
Shit guys, I'm sure we could find 50 of em here at
Despite what other posters seem to think, this switch, if properly promoted, could get AOL more subscribers. By tying TW properties into AOL's internet service, they've achieved the holy grail of ISP's: product differentiation.
Basically, dial-up internet access is a commodity, and has been since the mid/late '90's. There are some variations in customer service, e-mail/web space, and other little things, but ISP's are essentially offering the same product (access to the public internet) for the same price (~$20/month). For most customers, choosing a dial-up ISP might as well be done by flipping a coin. This is not the ideal situation for businesses, since they really don't have any basis for competition beyond flashy commercials and price cuts (not much of a margin for those). If you can't differentiate yourself from your competition, it's hard to increase your market share.
AOL now has the opportunity to truly separate themselves from their competition. History buffs might recognize that this is what AOL (and Prodigy, Compuserve, etc.) had in their early days. There wasn't much on the internet, and so they were able to sell unique content: chatrooms, magazine articles, software downloads, etc. Of course, all of that stuff eventually sought out a wider audience, and much of what made AOL unique diffused across public space, accessible to customers of any number of ISP's. AOL was now in the unenviable position of competing against (comparatively) bare-bones ISP, who could offer unmetered access at lower monthly rates. Despite the fact that AOL has consistently cost a few dollars more per month, they maintained a large customer base (inertia and advertising being the biggest reasons, probably).
Now, AOL has something to sell. Lots and lots of magazines. TV shows and movies. Access to a media empire (Wasn't that why they merged in the first place?). When consumers are deciding on an ISP, this will influence their decision. For a few extra dollars a month (I think it's $23.95/month compared to $19.95/month for other national ISP's, but correct me if I'm wrong), subscribing to AOL gives you access to the whole internet PLUS exclusive TW content. I suspect a lot of people will look at this as if they were getting dozens of magazine subscriptions for $4 per month, if it's marketed properly.
Of course, it might not work like this. Frankly, I think most people who want to be online are already online. The same inertia effect that's kept AOL's subscriber base intact might keep people from switching to AOL, even if they think they'll get a better deal there. There may not be many new customers to be found. Another danger is that if this isn't marketed properly, potential subscribers won't realize what they could be getting; the extent of TW's media holdings can't be overemphasized in any ad campaign. The only effect would then be to piss off non-AOL subscribers who currently read TW content online, but won't be able to in the future.
Bottom line: if done properly, this could get AOL/TW a lot of new subscribers. Do it poorly, and they'll just alienate a great number of people.
I already wrote to CNN.com and told them I would never EVER pay for their stupid video subscription. I could almost always see the videos somewhere else, and if I couldn't, who care? The news is what I care about...video is fluff at best.
If CNN.com goes away, boo-hoo. There's 100 other services out there that provide news for free, some without the capitalist slant. All these companies that are feeling the pinch of the slowing economy and the remains of the burst bubble break my heart. Cry me a river.
What nobody paid attention to back when the bubble was riding high was that surprise surprise, just because the Internet has arrived doesn't mean there's more consumers. The consumers just move from one product to another. It's akin to thermodynamics: demand cannot be created nor destroyed, only changed from one form of demand to another. Sites that don't provide anything new or remarkably different from everyone else are not going to survive.
Originality is what drives the best sites. Google is a shockingly good search engine...Yahoo and Amazon are very simple interfaces to many different types of content (stores, news, searching, auctions) and of course eBay is simply the de-facto standard for buying and selling items online. Provide something new and original, or stop whining.
(If the two companies decide to split up in the future (as has been rumored), I'd reconsider. Until then, AOHell isn't getting any of my money. They're worse than Microsoft...at least Microsoft doesn't have a stranglehold on the media.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
AOL users are the target demographics for Internet users. My business does a lot of work in "Internet Marketing," primarily search engine marketing. When AOL switched to Google, we did a little dance. Our bread and butter customers are AOL users. I've run the numbers, and our AOL users are easily worth 2x-3x the Internet as a whole.
Let's be real, if I'm selling a mass market product, would I rather his "everyman" on AOL, not too tech savvy but willing to pay extra for things, or the Slashdot "everything should be free and I'll help you circumvent the New York Times free registration" crew? The largest pools of users are AOL users and college students. Which crew has more money to drop on luxury items?
Not only that, if the service is limited to AOL users & paying Time Warner users (say, through Netscape.com as the service), the ads are even more valuable. By limiting it to people that are paying for a premium service (and AOL is 20% more than most ISPs, and 100% more than the cheapest) or paying for content, I am limiting myself to people with disposable income.
I got a friend doing the struggling artist thing in New York. She was complaining that she thinks that the NYT should sell "sections" of their paper cheaper so she could just buy the sections she wants. She doesn't understand why they pass up selling to her. I tried to explain to her that advertisers aren't interested in people trying to save 50 cents on the paper...
Alex