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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."
Unfortuntely, it seems like in the exec war TW-ers are winning (if not already won). It was mentioned in some story on /. a while ago. Too bad, as for my own political reasons I regard TW as a major evil[0] whereas AOL as a minor bad thing.
-DVK
[0] As an example, i'm boycotting CNN for the last 3 years 100%, and would switch to aletrnate cable provider in a second had TWC-NYC not been a monopoly where I live (can't have satellite in our building).
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
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 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.
It still does, and when I tried to talk to their Tech support people about registry changes made in the install process, they were clueless, and refuesed to help me.
I endedup having to burn a clients data to CDs (10 of them) and wipeing/reloading to get the ethernet connection working becuase it had screwed up the TCP/IP stack so badly.
I don't know about 8.0, but 6.0 would not just use their own TCP/IP stack, but appeared to overwrite the windows stack
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
Denis Leary, is that you?
No, it's George Carlin.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
> I think Steve Case is one of, if not THE, only major
> original AOL person left and that's because the AOL brand is
> synonymous with him.
And even he is still hanging by a thread..