Slashdot Mirror
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."
At the risk of being flammed to death, and no this isnt even a troll. I raise this point.
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?
Sure it wil suck for the rest of us, but hell its their company...If you dont like it..buy stock.
"Enlightenment is your ego's biggest disappointment." --Yoginanda
... 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.
I mean, do they expect to get more AOL subscribers? Who is going to get AOL just for TW content? Anyone?
and another one that's doing poorly.
I know! I'll bind them together at the hip like siamese twins! That will make them both look and function so much better! Ya, that's the ticket!
Stupid marketing dweebs.
If you post it, they will read.
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?
Talk about camablizing TW for the sake of AOL.
If they really want to redeem make AOL an attractive choice, they should allow broadband AOLers to download TWs Tv shows and old movies and the like.
Of course they'd rather sit on their ass and wait for things like CDBPTPA or whatever to 'promote' broadband by making computers illegal so people won't steal their crap. Sheesh.
I do read CNN once in a while though, when people to link to it.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The Internet is international. AOL is not. You do the math. They are effectively shutting out international users.
This won't work, because it will not be seen as AOL having extra features; it will be seen as Time-Warner lacking the feature of accessibility, and in the context of the Internet, users will always choose the most easily accessible source, and that means the one you don't have to sign up or pay for.
I for one welcome our new SCOviet Russian overlords to whom all our base are belong.
..where the prisoners inside are told the walls keep the barbarians out. And the "barbarians" don't care and build a better world outside the walls of the... garbage dump.
I don't subscribe to RMS's GNUtopian vision.
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
Stories unreported in the U.S., including about internal matters are better found from outlets in India, U.K., Germany and Israel.
You know, people who can find Iraq on a map! ;-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
This step is the logical extension of that plan - count on the value in Time-Warner media properties to make AOL valuable as a middleman.
Of course, Time-Warner media properties are only as valuable as the number of people who consume them. This plan will survive for precisely as long as it takes people to figure out that (a) they're paying and AOL toll and (b) they don't actually have to pay it, because Time-Warner doesn't produce anything that can't be had elsewhere without paying a tax to subsidize AOL's misbegotten existence.
Of course, the media-consuming public can be slow on the uptake, so maybe this scheme will work after all.
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
The problem with the model is that as everyone moves to a pay-for-content model, you are dealing with a limited consumer resource: money. Consumers only have so much money that they are willing to spend on web-content, which we've seen is precious few. What makes Time-Warner so confident that their content is going to make everyone pony up cash to see it?
Until they come up with the online equivalent of "Friends", I don't see a lot of people coming.
This idea won't fly in the long run.
A few bucks for Slashdot here.
A few bucks for Linux Today there.
A few more bucks for Ars Technica.
Still more bucks for RealWorldTech.
Actually, I don't subscribe to any of those. I read them, and I feel somewhat guilty about not subscribing, but I see a problem here. There are too many people holding out a hand for a little bit of my money.
Currently I support two PBS stations and public radio. I also have one magazine subscription, Linux Journal, and a few more magazines come to my house.
In the current situation, web subscriptions would like to exceed my dead tree subscriptions, and I can't even carry them to the bathroom.
Maybe the subscription model is better than popups, but it's still Not There Yet. If I knew the answer I'd be rich, but maybe it looks like a single higher-priced 'web subscription wallet' that lets me get those services, pay one fee, and not feel like I'm getting nickeled and dimed all over the place.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.