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Has AOL Lost Its Sex Drive?
TheViewFromTheGround writes "Why have the years since the merger with Time Warner been so hard on America Online? Michael Wolff, a consultant who advised Time Warner not to buy AOL in the early 90's, says that the the big problem is Time Warner's denial of AOL's core value: a monopoly on dirty chat. The argument says that AOL was successful because they had a critical mass of people and that it skillfully marketed talking dirty by appearing to be family friendly. Now, the old media bedfellow is pushing AOL to stop its pimping ways."
Damn! They're taking away the last good thing about AOL. ;-)
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Couldn't this have been worded better?
Compared to paying $2.99 a minute for a 976 number
and they're what makes people leave AOL in droves.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
Well?
"I'm an old-fashioned type of guy. I worship the Sun and Moon as gods. And fear them."
there was a first good thing with aol? god where was i and when was that?
Time Warner's cable interests carry as much softcore porn as the next guy and that don't seem to bother them none.
AOL's problems are market saturation pure and simple. No ISP can grow like AOL and others did in the late 90s and early 00s for ever.
Who wants a crappy service for $29.99 ??
You get better service, speed and options with other services.
AOL still wants to charge $15 to access their content if you use a different ISP!
Lol, Time Warner. Bunch of dipshits.
This isn't a dupe! We're overdue for one... damn, you guys can't even get your screwups right.
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
Have you seen the number of Penis increasing emails in the average AOL user's mailbox? These people should have the libido of a rabbit on ecstacy.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
Put word filters on AIM? That just means the 13 year old punks are going to have to start AIM'ing me with "U R SOFA KING WE TODD DID"
When exactly did AOL have a sex drive? The last thing I want to think about is AOL and sex. oh god, I need to go clean this filth off me now.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
You mean it's *not* because AOL just sucks?
Then it must be the superintelligent user base. . .
AOL offers a community feel. A safe-place for internet non-newbies to get warm fuzzies and feel happy and loved. Unfortunately, there are so many other online communities that it's no longer necessary to pay $23.95 for constant busy signals.
The primary reason people are still with AOL is that many of their subscribers don't feel like they have a choice. "I can't use something else because I don't know how to switch".
I recently moved my mother-in-law from AOL to Earthlink. She thanks me to this day, even though it's something she could have done.
-- People who hate Windows use Linux. People who love UNIX use BSD.
like this? If only I knew that AOL came with one of those before!
God Fucking Damnit
Didn't AOL buy Time Warner?? Shouldn't they be dictating what is going on? I realize the TW is probably the more stable company, but ...
This would be a perfect article for a 1,000 hours free ad.
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
I know the average slashdot reader may find this hard to believe, but not everyone is using the internet to help them masturbate. Mentioning children and family values will be terribly cliched, but they really are still relevent.
So what if AOL is closing some of the more distasteful chat-rooms; perhaps it will improve the quality and performance of the internet for the rest of us.
Would it be because these Sex Drives are manufactured by Western Digital?
Hmm?
400 pound 40 year old bald man AKA SexxyStud91134: A/S/L???
400 pound acne ridden 38 year old balding woman AKA HotMomma92394848: 18/f/Miami u?
SS: 19/M/Denver.
HM: Sounds good, what you look like?
SS: I am 6'5, 250 pounds of tight muscle. u?
HM: 5'5 petite brown hair.
(uploads random amateur porn star jpeg to each other and proceeds to cyber)
Yeah, you know I'm right. And btw, I hate you HotMamma92394848 for ruining my dreams of AOL women!!!
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
The reason AOL is losing business is because anyone with half a brain sees that for $29.95 they can get cable or DSL. Once you've gotten a taste of always-on broadband, who would want measly 56k for almost the same price? AOL charges $23.95 for crumby dialup! And anyone can use AOL Instant Messenger to IM their AOL and internet buddies! What are they offering me? Once cable was available in my area I made the switch immediately!
If AOL lost it's sex drive I think it showed up at Yahoo! My widowed 63 year old mother seems to find the raunchiest people to talk to on Yahoo somehow. I can't decide whether to let her have her fun or destroy her computer.
The article immediately before this one on IDE/ATAPI to SCSI Converters was a dupe from October.
Happy now?
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
-2 for redundant grammar errors.
They have the internet on computers now?
AOL used to be like the average geek. Strong sex drive, but no sex appeal... (Unless you get your average user pitty drunk).
-----.----.-------
I'll
I don't think I've ever read an article posted here that was such obvious tripe. AOL is not number one because they have sex chat, they're number one because they're EASY TO USE.
Say what you will about AOL's reliability, tech support and the general IQ level of its users, it is and always has been pretty much "click-and-go".
I set it up for people on occasion now and it just works. And when I used AOL in 1991-97 it was easy to use and "just worked" then too.
(remember the DOS interface -- when there were only about 25,000 users?)
load "windows7"
I remember way back when I used AOL. It was an ok service provider. I didn't get busy signals like everyone else. The only gripe I ever had with AOL as in ISP was that in order to connect you had to run the bloated memory eating AOL software. Whereas for another dial up ISP I could use the super lite built in windows dial up networking. I don't want to have to use up all my RAM just to establish a connection. I always ended up minimizing the AOL software and using netscape or other programs.
AOL was always so dumb with the way they sent out their discs. I got some in collector tins (like altoids tins).
Their problem isn't that somebody just up-and-decides they need internet access. It's in being around when somebody finally decides they do need to get online. Nothing about the AOL discs inspires someone to keep them around. What they should have been doing is include some additional content that makes you want to hold onto the disc. They're paired with TimeWarner for goodness sakes, you'd think that would give them compelling content. The folks in AOLs marketing department are just stupid with the way they spend money on those discs. (not that I'm not thankful for the few free DVD holder cases)
I don't know if this is still true (the last time I used AOL was about '94), but once you started using the free hours, AOL needed a credit card number. Just in case you, uh, go over the limit. What they didn't tell you is that if you did go over the limit, you wouldn't be notified; they just quietly started billing you. Then it was the devil's own work to try and get them to stop, and especially to get your CC out of their database.
"Have you seen the number of Penis increasing emails in the average AOL user's mailbox?"
Penis increasing? I hope you're talking about size and not number.
DRM = Digitally Restricted Media. This is a viral sig, pass it on.
is that in their rush to embrace the Internet they made themselves obsolete. Throughout the early 90's AOL really did provide a lot of value add and made online communities and chatting accessible to the average computer user. By the mid 90's people were still using AOL because it was a safe way to ease into that "WWW thing" everyone was now talking about but still have acess to all that AOL content. Flash forward to the very late 90's and now and AOL has stopped producing anywhere near the amount of content that they used to. All the old cool things like AOL's gaming content just pushes you right back onto the internet. AOL in striving so hard to make sure people could access the internet through them has ceased to have any value beyond that of your basic ISP. All roads from AOL lead out to the internet and eventually most users ask themselves why bother with AOL and its bloated crappy software at all? AOL's user base has "grown up" and the user base which they pull from (newbies) are going to be in shorter and shorter supply as time goes on. Couple that with missing out on being bundled with XP and you see that AOL just don't have that great a future.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
What ever happen to a better service and/or at a better price. Plus with Time Warners content(movies, actors, directors, writers, etc.) kinda makes you wonder what they're thinking.
fact is, all of my friends who were aol addicts were hooking up with girls online. that's why they had aol, period. now, they're doomed to be a first rate version of msn, and that aint sayin much.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
They force you to use their dialer, meaning you can't do simple dial-up networking sharing, auto-dialing. Other ISPs use these but still allow you to set up an (unsupported) PPP connection using standard tools
Said dialer software is full of adverts. AOL/Time Warner removed popup handling abilities from Netscape for this reason, I believe.
At one point, you had to use their own browser
It forces you to have Real Player installed (evil) and complains every time you dial in if you remove it
They ask for your credit card during the trail for verification etc then automatically start billing you without warning. Cancelling used to be difficult and often went "wrong".
You are paying over the odds because the service has great customer help, which is useless to techies. (I'd recommend it to non-techies for this reason tho)
They send junk mail. Lot's of it. Regularly. To the same people.
Said junk mail is not just recyclable paper, it's a cd-rom and a complete waste of resources and bad for environment as it needs to be disposed of in landfills.
Typically, lamers and newbies were on AOL. A large majority of HTML posts to usenet are from AOL and other anti-social net activites are common, hence the term AOLamer
They encourage parents to give up responsibility for their children's safety into the hands of parental controls in software.
They encourage parents to give up responsibility for helping their children with their education since "homework help is just a breeze on AOL"
Their business model depends on people no realising that they are out of free hours and are going to be charged unless they perform some frustrating and time-hungry tasks to cancel the service. Essentially, they depend on the users thinking they know the whole story when really, they don't until they are forced to pay more.
They give a misconception of 'the internet' to new users. Some people think that surfing aol:// addresses means they are on the internet.
They are an ecological menace. Most of the CDs they send out are trashed. Also, consider the waste put out to make the components of the CDs and electricity expended to make something which just fills our landfills faster.
They reward ignorance. They make it acceptable for you to know nothing about computers and be happy with it even though you are using them as an integral part of your life. (Please no automobile analogies.)
The stifle choice. Supposedly part of the big news for AOL 8 is that you can now choose between 8 welcome screens and change the colours of your AOL interface ... oooooh ....
It takes a everything short of a lawsuit to make them stop billing you.
AOL does not introduce people to the Internet, it dumbs down the Internet, thereby hurting the users in the process. 90% of the AOL users I've had to deal with think their Web Browser is the "Internet". And after years of thinking this, it is almost impossible to get them to understand the truth.
AOL harbors undesirable individuals much like certain middle eastern nations harbor militant terrorists. What's worse, with all the free 1000 hour disks floating about, individuals who mean ill to the 'Net at large can easily gain free access over and over to do more damage.
The service is crap. But since most AOL users have been coddled for so long, they CAN'T learn to use anything else; they are stuck w/ sub par service...
If I think of some more reasons (I know there's a few more)... I'll post another response... :P
;-)
Just a few thoughts from the top of my head...
He had an argument with one of the AOL "guides" over which baseball team was the best, and the guide didn't like how he was getting one-upped by my brother's mental compendium of statistics... so he promptly banned my entire family for life from AOL.
I loved that thing. They later changed their name to ImagiNation Network and didn't last too much longer after that.
HotMomma92394848 is also a 400 pound 40 year old bald man.
The idea of having sex with Steve Case is inherently nauseating. I don't see where these people get these foolish ideas.
Nope, I found it right here.
Finally the truth is out. I remember when I left aol this is back like 6 years ago to use earthlink and IRC to chat. I tried and failed horrible to get all my friends from school to log unto IRC with no luck. finally I had to go back to AOL in order to talk to everyone I knew. However with Yahoo,msn,icq messenger the whole chat concept is no longer just aol. I haven't been on AOL since 3.0 killed my computer.
The article has an interesting point of view, however I think AOL is failing due to stagnation. The article touches on this a little, AOL hasn't innovated in years. Seriously, no matter how lame AOL is in reality, they did make some great innovations in instant chat. All the new AOL releases over the past 2+ years haven't added much besides a new revision number.
I'm not a big fan of AOL, in fact, I dislike it, but the premise for Wolff's argument is so tenuous. If it were written by one of my students, I would give it a D. As evidence, he presents one account of John Podhoretz, an alleged conservative. That's just one "fact." It's not hard evidence!
As anyone who has ever used AOL realizes, not everyone uses it for the chatrooms. In fact, as evidenced by the immaturity of such chatters, most of the people talking are teenagers, and they are more concerned with "a/s/l" questions than the formation of physical relationships.
If AOL's PR firm presents it as "family friendly," it's because the company wishes to be seen as the family friendly ISP solution. They aren't involved in some bizarre "yes means no" advertising scheme where "family friendly" really means "dirty talk dating service."
So, I'll conclude this with one question: Where's the proof?
What else was there, ever?
being back only reminds me of one thing. Truly large CORPORATIONS do NOT HAVE SEX DRIVES (m$ excluded, but they just get off on fucking other companies up the ass). fact is, corporates lust for power. aol was never the monolith that TW is, until today. they were a very flat corporate culture comapared to TW.
bottom line. using the words corporate and sex together is silly. your warning level is at 20%, thank you, drive thru.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
and we were challenged with coming up with room names that might be borderline questionable. One of our jobs was browsing the room names and privatizing names like the one you mentioned. These rooms were still available, but you had to know the room name to get in. I did come up with a room name that no one could ever make a policy decision about whether or not it would be "closed" to the public. My room name was, "Morning Wood on Back Nine".
It's easy to stand out when the general level of competence is so low.
No, AOL does not need it, nor desererve it, it's a DIALUP service
Ok, with all the pr0n references around here, how many of you guys havent had a 'dirty' chat session every now and then? Honestly, even I hooked up serveral times thanks to AOL. Im my younger days, of course....
AOL was the first online service to embrace Windows GUI. This was natural because it evolved froom a Mac company.
It beat Compuserve out. I know this from first hand experience working at TSN, another pre-internet online-service that at one time had the same number of user as AOL (but we were a game service, not general) and I watched AOL skyrocket from shipping it's Windows client when Compuserve thought DOS was a better way to go. When Compuserve came out with WinCIM, it was too late for them. It was the mid nineties and many companies got rewarded/spanked by betting on Windows/NotBettingOnWindows.
They had critical mass first.
Now there is critical mass everywhere.
Which of course means next comes a nuclear explosion...
or wait, did we already have one?
-pyrrho
Due to the fact that we have no more porn on our Internet Service we have lost 20 million users, and 200 Million dollars in revenue because of this.
---
Don't get any on-
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...the Time Warner people, who know a thing or two about advertising, correctly surmised that advertising was not going to support the Internet. And so the plan was to sell users Time Warner content. (In my personal defense, I kept talking about what a dirty place AOL was -- that the Internet was the porn business. But the feeling seemed to be that, first, I was joking and, second, while new entertainment technologies often started dirty, they soon became much more sanitized and mass-market.) This service, which started in the autumn of 1994 and closed in the spring of 1999, was called Pathfinder and proved two things: Selling Time Warner content on the Internet was pretty much a nonstarter, and the people at Time Warner lacked a certain flair for the Internet. We just don't get it, they said. Which was the essential reason for merging with AOL. [Emphasis mine.]
I'm not sure that Mike's getting it any more than TW. Does anyone with any sense imagine that *this internet thing* is going to fall apart if someone can't figure out how to make money on it with standard advertainment/publimation models? Even in '94. And dirty chat is a killer app?
illegitimii non ingravare
You know, all this "safe internet" shit really bothers me. I'm tired of "kids" movies. I'm tired of "kids" television. I'm tired of hearing everybody kow-towing (is that how that's spelled?) to kids.
All, right, yes, yes, yes: kids are important. I know that. I don't deny that. But for fuck's sake: I'm important, too. And while my idea of decent entertainment isn't hardcore porn 24/7, it's not the teletubbies either. It's not Blues Clues. And it's not all the shit that the networks pimp out during their "safe hours."
I watch the Sopranos because it's entertaining. I don't give a rat's ass if it's goddamn offensive, because life is fucking offensive. Sadaam Hussein is fucking offensive.
Fundamentalist religious idiots offend me. I'm offended by Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, all the right-wing religious zealots who appear on late-night cable and who have -- I'll say this now because it's been on my mind for years -- the weirdest fucking hair-dos I have ever seen.
What is it with these wacko Christian fudamentalists? What's with the hair? Why does all their hair -- men, women, it doesn't matter -- swoop and wave and look like Donald Trump on acid?
Speaking of which, Donald Trump offends me.
Bin Laden offends me.
All this terrorism shit offends me. And, no, one man's freedom fighter is not another man's terrorist. If you fucking kill civilians -- innocent men, women, and children -- you're a goddamn terrorist. And you offend me. I don't give a fuck if you think the civilians are paying taxes to the evil government. You don't go killing people who can't defend themselves. Period. If you wanna blow shit up, put on a goddamn uniform, grab your rusty-ass Kalishnikovs, and goddamn claim a fucking state to be your backer. But don't hide in the fucking shadows.
I'm tired of the Anti-Americanism. True, America is big and bad and loud. But we're not the *SOLE* cause of misery in the world. I'm tired of nations who just blame, blame, blame and don't accept even a modicum of responsiblity.
I'm offended by the local news. I'm offended by dippy newscasters who worry about whether or not their colleagues have given them a good "segue" to talk about the next story. Because (a) no one except dippy newscasters give a fuck about "segues" and (b) no one but dippy newscasters tease their fucking audience so much and after *every* fucking segment.
"But will this beautiful weather last? Tune in at 10!"
"But will the snow come? Tune in at 10!"
That offends me. Local news and the way they manipulate you. Not all media offends me. I like the New York Times. But the Chicago Tribune is a fucking joke. There's *nothing* to read in the Tribune. It's like some goddamn newspaper for fifth graders.
Bob Greene creeped me out. But he's gone now. I knew he was bad news years and years ago. I'm disappointed it took this long to toss his ass out of the cubicle and onto the pavement.
I miss Mike Royko. I like eating lunch at the Billy Goat Tavern. I like cheesburgers and Pepsi. So fucking sue me. I like the grease on the burgers.
And I like White Castle. Bring it on, motherfucker. I'll take that bag of fifteen sliders. Sure, I'll get sick after I eat it and shorten my lifespan, but I'd rather shorten my fucking lifespan in one moment of enjoyment than worry about it being prematurely shortened by the four tons of VX that Sadaam has hidden in some Libyan bunker that'll get wheeled out and shipped back to Iraq once the shooting starts.
My point? Life is offensive. Suck it up. I watched my share of Sesame Street and Electric Company and Mr. Rogers, but that's fine. Those shows were there for me. And I appreciated it. Just like Blues Clues and those fucking weird-ass teletubbies "Teletubby Bye Bye" are there, too. But give folks a break. Not everything has to be kid safe.
ANd now, on-topic:
The concept of an internet community is bullshit. AOL was never a goddamn community. It was dirty chat. Who here hasn't dirty chatted on AOL? No one.
And who here realized after you dirty chatting you were chatting to some legless freak that was just duping your sorry ass into thinking, well, maybe this dirty chat stuff isn't so bad after all?
Hell, I remember when AOL started and they charged by the hour. I ran up a goddamn huge ass bill on account of my pud-whacking chats to legless freaks of (most likely) both, neither, either, or sexes. God knows who I was talking to. But, the idea of a community is bullshit. It was just a place to talk dirty and hope for the best.
Cross your fingers, maybe this freak is the girl/guy/whatever of your dreams. But of course it wasn't, and you immediately knew it when, after pressing for more information, you received the IM that said, "Well, wait. Listen. There's something you should know."
Besides, if you want "safe" communities, there's the real world. Don't mistake virtual pudwhacking for real world social interaction. It never was, is, or will be. It's every man and women for themselves, god save the queen, hold your nose, because here I come, baby.
Everybody whacks their puds, lets be honest. But lets at least stand up and like that guy in Network say, "I'm mad as hell and not going to take it anymore." At least not in the virtual wastelands like AOL.
A few years ago when Silicon Valley CEO's were getting busted for thinking they were chatting up children for hot dates. It's my theory that all the competent execs were pervs and when they got locked up the bubble burst.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
i had aol since ver 1.1....
;)
i recently cancelled. (after they offered me 2 months free, which i accepted, then cancelled 2 months later) i had Bring Your Own Access for the last bunch of years when an isp was easily accessible...
i was a beta tester, aol has some pretty great games in thier "premium" section, but thats just it, they try to take all your money at all times.
newsgroups were a joke, no nntp access, that aol newsgroup keyword was horrible...
i gotta say that the AOL chats had some pretty damned good warez/porn/mp3 chans, cause there is/was a 16mb limit on email attachments, so 15mb rars were perfect, mass mails made it easily distributible between lots of people, upload once, forward and forward and forward... i wonder if "mm" and "cerver" are still around
anyways, aol really wasnt that bad, it was one of the two/three isps back then (i had used observer and eccentric, and something else). of course, every year they added prices, adding and adding and adding, i quit when they tried to tack on 3 bux to the BYOA. it helped me get on the internet and learn WHAT NOT TO DO, "A/S/L" is evilll.... ALL CAPS or CaSe TaLKiNG is really lame, same as 3v17 h4x0r talk, and i bet if it wasnt started there, it definitly matured there.
I thought you stopped posting here!
AOL has been on it's way out for years. Time Warner's merger with AOL was dumb.... and not just "regular" dumb... really really dumb.
At one point in time AOL had a fairly nice product to offer; however, over time AOLs service became bloated, annoying, sloppy, and restrictive. Fortunately, AOL had the dot-com bubble to keep them, and their horrible product, profitable. AOL had tons ad revenue coming in from numerous dot com companies, and many consumers where still new to the concept of being "online."
Yet now most of AOLs ad clients have either bit the dust or come to realize that banner ads and spam are not necessarily the best way to advertise. Moreover, now that a number of people in the world have had a chance to use the internet sans AOL (ie, LANs at work, schools, libraries, etc), folks are beginning to realize that AOL is a huge POS.
If Time Warner actually -thought- about what AOL was selling and how they were making money I doubt these two companies would have merged. But, hey, that didn't happen.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
AOL was not the first company to deploy an instant messaging service that was availible internet wide, ICQ was and that is where the whole cyber-sex thing started. It was easy to find a partner via ICQ and it's random "Men Seeking Women" (etc...) friend finder was a god-sent to helpless, love-sick nerds everywhere (all-be-it porly sorted and managed). Simply put, AOL took an existing technology, put a family friendly coat of make-up on it and a "I don't like those dirty bad nasty words" fuction and called it good for a mere ~$23. Once again we've seen a monopoly take an existing technology, made it friendly, then made it availible. The only step that they're missing from various other monopolies is making it cheap. The last thing most of us will ever dream of seeing is an AOL user switching over to a better, faster connection.
I'm a guy... You're a girl... Simple logic shows us that it is time to start making babies.
After examining your message I think I've pinpointed the problem behind your lack of sex appeal...
your sig.
:)
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
Ever since I've been on, AOL has monitored the language of chat rooms, which is pretty damn annoying, but it explains why you go into a room and no one says anything, we're all IM-ing each other.
Does anyone remember when you get get real porn from AOL picture galleries? It was sometime in the early 90's. When they decided to go "family friendly" they first blacked out all the genital areas, then got rid of the nudie galleries all together.
I'm surprised that no one brought up that Time Warner cable (provider of my cable modem service) might be diminishing AOLs subscriber base. What's really odd is that they didn't try to "upsell" me to AOL once I got the cable modem.
Someone might check this. Since Microsoft is better than AOL there has to be something really wrong.
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
The best thing about AOL when you're a newbie is the fact it uses it's own TCP/IP stack.
;)
The worst thing about AOL when you're no longer a newbie is that it uses it's own TCP/IP stack.
It used to, anyway. If my memory serves me right.
And girls in those days didn't say "I don't talk to people I don't know" when you IM'd them
Get your own free personal location tracker
Sex drive loses AOL!
2 old roommates. Two guys, just like the pervs described in the article. They would get on AOL and search for user profiles that contained words like "drink" or "party". Then they would send instant messages to these girls (aka "AOL sluts") for 6 hours/day. Once they started talking to a girl, they'd start sending nude pics of themselves to these girls, and sure enough, the girls would come over within a few days. We're talking 2-3 girls per week, n/k. It all came to a halt a while ago when one of them caught a nasty case of the clap. Of course he got it from an AOL hookup and found out he had it by giving it to a different AOL hookup. Without AOL, these guys would have no social life. Anyone else know people like this?
And there was no WWW. Back then they were not only easy to use but the only game in town for the average Joe. They provided the sort of service to the average home user that would be expected of an internet account, and did it without UNIX, archie, gopher, telnet and all that other arcane crap.
.
But times change. Now the hardest part of setting up a DHCP account is typing in the names of your ISP's mail and news servers and your ISP will usually be glad to do this *for* a new account.
AOL exists at all now on the pure inertia of already existing. But there's this thing called friction. .
KFG
Time Warner had It's A Wonderful Life, AOL had teenagers curious about bondage. Which is worth more?
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
...in under 10 minutes. Do some searching around for "AOL proggies" or the like, find something that can harvest names off chat rooms and spam them with fake 'send me your username and password' messages. Spam the moderators.
Voila! No more AOL!
(no, seriously, it works.)
This
Isn't everybody using YAHOO now anyway?
I mean seriously, you can search out a chat-room by your state, do voice with the whole room, deal with booting, view web-cams, and basically just talk some serious shit to underage and overweight people.
I thought Yahoo Fuck-Chat was WAY more popular than AOL Fuck-Chat these days? Maybe AOL just never noticed this?
*(You boot them or they boot you... it becomes a pissing contest about who is the bigger skript kiddie, of course... but that's life in this primarily lamer-driven internet we live in now days.)
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Has AOL Lost Its Sex Drive?
been so hard on America Online
old media bedfellow
This gets my vote for "Slashdot Headline with the most innuendos..."
Guess Uncle Ted doesn't like naughty...
not only was the sex drive lost, the whole array went down.
"We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it" -- Winston Churchill
AOL Keyword: Dirty-Smutty-Pr0n-Chat-For-40-Year-Old-Preverted-M en-Who-Don't-Shave-Their-Backs
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Uh huh. Was this before or after IRC?
So now they're trying to tell us that AIM came out before ICQ? ICQ was the first Instant Messenger I used. I remember when AIM came out and it was LONG after ICQ. Then AOL bought Mirabilis and the ICQ client slowly degenerated into an advertising channel with a messaging feature. (Now I use Miranda)
'scuse me?! I was using ICQ over dial-up almost five years ago, if I've done the math right. The friend that introduced me to it had a five digit ICQ number. My sister got an ICQ account before AIM came out and she's non-technical. Then all her friends signed up.
I'll let them off the hook for the last one because ICQ2Go didn't come around until after Mirabilis was purchased by AOL. There may still have been someone who did it before they did, I don't know.
My username does not make me Apathetic. It's irony, get it?
Back from the future...
You've seen all of the changes to the SCSI standards over the years. SCSI 1,2 3, wide, fast-wide, ultra, ultra 2. Next will be SCSI extended, or Sex. So hard, fast, swollen and throbbing that no one will be able to resist walking in to a computer store and proudly saying. I've earned enough to BUY a BIGGER Sex drive. What have you got? I need more room for PR0N!
It is now time to flip off your computer.
where the men are men, the women are men, and the boys are FBI agents.
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
Me and a friend of mine had a class project where we had to do a survey (blah) so we went into an AOL chat, and it was ladden with the pr0n. So, we go to another one, and it was the same way. Eventually, it transitioned into a game where we tried to find one that wasn't pornographic. We didn't win.
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
All the lost sex drive of a serial child molester.
Have they stopped repeatedly screwing their customners in the ass with their poor service, high rates, and popup ads?
No? Then make sure that they register as a sex offender in your state and watch your kids.
Life is tough. It's tougher if you're stupid. --John Wayne
Yes.
I'm sad to inform you that you've been affected by AOL.
You no longer can discern the difference between "loose" and "lose".
Cut your modem cable, pick up a real book, and you'll be cured by next week.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
...just got a sudden flashback of 17 years ago, AOL was spankin' new, and my mom walked in just as somebody started talking about "stimulating g-spots" in some chat room.. Needless to say I was in trouble... ugh
Don't forget that CNN and NPR have allowed US military "psy-ops" officers to be "interns" in their news offices.
I SO-8859-1&q=cnn+army+psyops
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=
cpeterso
IU really wish this merger wouldve never happened. Amongst my reasons, aside from the media monopoly, is that the warner brothers stores were all closed.
Where do you want to be, What are you doing to get there.
Anyone remember metasquares? It was a free game on AOL maybe 6 years ago, and it was one of the funnest online games I ever played. Then they cancelled it. That's ok, I learned something about computers after that, and that was the end of AOL.
Who here hasn't dirty chatted on AOL? No one.
I never did, mainly because by the time I was old enough to think about sex, I was old enough to realize how lame and restrictive AOL is. No, I've never even had the urge to talk dirty to strangers on AOL. You really don't know what you're getting, and I'd much rather have the real thing.
That isn't to say that I don't, as you so elegantly put it, "whack my pud"; just not to an AOLuser's fervent one-handed typing.
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
There are no safe communities! The universe HATES you! It wants to KILL you! And one day it WILL succeed! You can lock yourself in prisions of fear, let other people tell you they know better than you what you and your kids should be exposed to but it's not going to change the fact that one day you are GOING TO DIE! And then what? You get the prize for being a fucking sheep your entire life? You get to live with fucking Mormons for the rest of eternity? Fuck that! Get out there and live a little. Taunt Death! Get in everyone's face about it! Don't try to take the fucking "safe" route! Ultimately, what the hell do you have to lose, anyway?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The only one fscking me is AOL out of $21.95 a month.
Yes, I know they've raised the price, but it's word for word.
I once used aol while living within the castle walls of my parents. It was free and it was all I had (as far as they knew I had). I disposed of the evil ISP as soon as possible and became baptised the next day in the holy water of prism.net
God has forgive me for my use of aol.. he can save you to!
"Oh shit. That wasn't supposed to happen." - OpenBSD telnet exploration turned into accidental server crash
Just an inside thought, back in the day when AOL was all I had, I began my curiosity of its networks and learned that the chat room servers disallowed multiple chat room names. (duh, of course) What I did find out that proved dangerous was the %02 and the %0a code were read differently, thus allowing the creation of room names _very_ similar.
the%02kiddies = the kiddies
the%0akiddies = the kiddies
so the chat server creates the secondary because it allows the difference of 2 and a, while the aol programs on the server notice the similar name but do not check the 2 and a difference.
Thus, in panic it shuts down both chat rooms, leaving everyone inside, blocking it from the chat room list and any entry inside unless you know the origonal chatroom url.
Anyways, the point is, after spending months explaining and contacting AOL about this breach, I was constantly transfered over and over, because no one knew what I was talking about.
I was eventually given the address to the virus control center in Washington.....
This just goes to show that major security holes in AOL 7+ exist, but AOL simply doesnt know how to fix them.
(the actions to create a duplicate chat room name will be withheld from this forum, as I simply dont want a massive amount of scRiPt3Rs going out and destroying the AOL world more than it is)
"Oh shit. That wasn't supposed to happen." - OpenBSD telnet exploration turned into accidental server crash
...because they had cycled through all the users and few people ever switch *back* to AOL. That includes yours truly, who tried the free offer, ran one minute over, and then got zapped with monthly charges for service I never used. IIRC, that was the subject of a class action in the mid or late 90s, just before the internet bubble, and was one of the reasons I thought AOL was a bad investment. Silly me. If I had sold near the top... oh well... you know.
My reasoning was that companies that screw their customers will eventually fail. Of course that may be true, but if they can screw their customers and get away with it for several years, they are a good investment, provided you know when to get out.
I'm not saying that AOL screws customers now. It sounds like they learned a lesson. I think their problem is that they appeal to new users, then the new users move on. Either that, or they move off. Yep, that's right. People who don't need the interenet. Imagine that.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
AOL says it has about 30 million members. Eventually they're going to hit a plateau and stop the massive growth they had in the late 90s. In fact they already have. They've got to find NEW ways of revenue. The days of massive growth are over. I don't think it has anything to do with dirty sex chat. There's still plenty of that. In fact AOL has never advertised that. Go to their chat room listings. You still see those chat rooms. Another thing hurting AOL is competition. There's a lot more of it. Earlier they had to compete with other ISPs when they had the best chat rooms. Now other web sites and ISPs have good chat rooms and instant messanging too. AOL is a victim of capatilism. They've grown all they can in the terms of members, they now need to look to NEW ways of entertaining their members. Maybe then they'll get new ones.
I should say as a caveat that Wolff ran one of the original dot bombs, Wolff New Media, which managed to run itself into the ground BEFORE 2000. I've heard from several people he was an asshole boss, and when he ran out of money, he asked his workers to work for free (which some morons did) and then he took what money was left and took a vacation in Tuscany. I would take anything he says with a grain of salt.
Suck.com did a good exposé on him in 1998.
Years ago I was a moderator for an AOL group and I figured out quickly that most people on AOL were hanging out in the adult chat groups. I'm glad someone has brought this out to the public.
It is sad that some of the things that made AOL great might get less attention as the Time Warner boys move in, but unlike the writer:
1) I doubt it will happen because this is about content, and I don't think the swinging scat fetishists are on AOL for the content -- they're on for the hot (lunch) chat and community experience. Yes they made AOL with their non-stop, $500 a month chat habits, but it's a different business now. AOL's membership is in the tens of millions, these folks number in the hundreds of thousands -- and as compulsive chatters in a fixed-rate world -- don't represent much to AOL anymore. To lose the folks due to inattention would be a shame, but more in the metaphysical sense than from a business point of view.
2) Everyone else is on AOL (and MSN, and Yahoo!) for the E-mail and content. There are a thousand little niche groups I could list (newbies, people who only use it out of habit, etc...), but one way or another the majority of folks are there to read E-mail and content.
AOL (like MSN and Yahoo!) is a content network. Content is expensive to produce and serve. It requires creative, editorial, production, technical, and maintenance staff, hardware and bandwidth. The staff who perform this work must be managed. The managers must be managed. In a company the size of AOL, the managers of the managers of the managers of the managers must be managed. This is an exaggeration in support of my point which is: From a business standpoint, it's hard to believe anyone could come to a reasoned conclusion that their stragtegy is off. Here's why:
1) If it's succesful, it pave the way for AOL/Time Warner to roll up dubiously (heh heh) successful online properties (e.g. people.com, time.com, cnn.com) without taking them offline. By doubiously succesful I mean: as online properties supported by a gutted advertising market, they just lose money anyway. Some of the loyal people.com readers _will_ come over to AOL. This is true for cnn.com, time.com, etc... readers as well. Yes this means downsizing and merging functions and the like, which is difficult and strategically risky. But if they're succesful with the people.com experiment, get ready for them to start rolling these properties up quickly.
2) AOL customers who might have been using the public network (which is expensive for AOL, since the bandwidth costs for them are at the edges of their network rather than inside it) to visit other interactive Time Warner properties will now do that within AOL's network. How many customers do this? How much will it save? You can bet AOL knows -- every
3) It broadens AOL's content base, which might help them stem the flow of users who have figured out that the public internet has a lot more content on it than AOL.
Pathfinder failed because it was ahead of its time. The writer notes that it was started in 1994 and shut down in 1999. Go Figure. In 1995 I had a beautiful blue Indy on my desk at a little interactive firm called Giant Step. It was my workstation and the primary DNS ("name service") and Web host for United Airlines (ual.com) and Maytag (maytag.com). Sometimes, when I was coding, I'd screw something up and shut down and restart the computer because I didn't know enough about Unix (Irix) to kill off the offending program I had written without shutting the box down. There was no firewall. There was no fault-tolerant n-tier architecture. Just me and my Indy.
My point (aside from painful nostalgic reveling) is:
1) Times have changed. The Web and its users have gone through the boom cycle and matured quite a bit in a short time. A good portion of the internet population is now paying for at least some of the content they consume.
2) No one would have paid for content in 1994, 1995,
In closing I'd have to say that AOL users and non-users who enjoy comedycentral.com, cnn.com, the Netscape Network, time.com, people.com or any of the many other tens (hundreds?) of Time Warner interactive properties is in for some changes. I think this experiment will succeed.
Luckily, there doesn't appear to be any visible intent on the part of the big bad Time Warner wolf to stop people from chatting about plans to screw each others wives or poop on each other. And thank goodness for that. Without that, it just wouldn't be AOL.
...this really reminds me of my adolescent years,when I made the great discovery that... the Rock Hudson and Doris Day movies were about... *sex!* And those mysterious jokes that I didn't understand were about... *sex!* And those "adult book stores" WEREN'T about highly advanced books with long words in them that only adults could understand, they were about... *sex!* Imagine that!
So, of course, I jumped to the conclusion that _almost everything_ was about sex.
The writer says "Then, too, in my personal focus group of thirtysomething single people... [everybody is talking about] having more sex than ever before (when you visit another city, you set up some dates before you arrive -- like booking a hotel)."
Yeah, right. I knew young men that bragged about stuff like that, too.
It's probably true that Prodigy's failure (the original Prodigy with the censorship, etc.) was related to overcontrol and trying to turn the whole site into a "shut up and shop" site.
And there's probably some truth to the article.
But there's more fantasy than truth in it.
The author of the article, Michael Wolff, wrote a book called Burn Rate back in 1998. Its all about how his small media company got sucked into the DotCom revolution, nearly made him very rich and nearly bankrupt, and generally pointed out that the bubble was going to burst, two years before it did. Most of his attempts to sell his company for lots of cash involved AOL, so he has plenty more to say about them in the book. And he made this point about AOL as the 'ultimate brown paper bag' in that book, so the article in a large part is just a rehash of his own work of four years ago. Still, a good book and a decent article.
If your boss is a slashdot janitor, it could mean a big raise for you if you do it.
Refereee: WHOOOOOOOOOT! Two minute penalty for age-sex-location checking!
Aol, so sleezy to use, no wonder its number one!
Count me as one in the legions of those who wish people to have confidence in their first posting ability.
YOU ARE SO FIRED!
One of the first quesitions asked when diagnosing a connection problem: "Have you ever used AOL on this computer before?"
It's easy to use because it takes over your computer. Sure AOL will work great. The problem being that NOTHING ELSE WILL!
Mathematicians often resort to something called Hilbert space, which is
described as being n-dimensional. Like modern sex, any number can play.
-- Dr. Thor Wald, "Beep/The Quincunx of Time", by James Blish
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