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AOL Reports Its First Drop In Subscribers
Flamesplash writes "Yahoo! is running this AP story about AOL's first drop in subscribers. 170,000 US subscribers have left AOL in their fourth quarter of 2002, apparently due to users becoming more comfortable with broadband connections. It should be noted though that 'AOL has said it has stopped simply signing up new customers for the sake of counting them.'"
Isn't that like saying you made X number of dollars, when you only made Y?
Oh yeah...
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
They have a nicely written, in-depth piece on AOL's new head master, Dick Parsons, as he deals with the trials and tribulations of running such a large, well-known company as AOL.
Non-registration, direct link version: Tests Keep Coming for AOL Time Warner's Well-Tested Chief
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Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
Or a lot of 'Vacation Signups' (i.e. sign up for an AOL account when you're on vacation to have access , but then you cancel when you get home)
"Defenestration" is to throw out of a window; what's a word for throwing 'Windows' out of something?
When they upped the Bring Your Own Access plan to $14.95/month is when I dropped after subscribing for years. I found four girlfriends and countless dates on AOL, and they were mostly smart college girls that went to my university or a nearby one. I also found VB programmer chicks, which are fun to talk to for a few minutes, and one even gave me a job lead. But $15/mo on top of my broadband bill is too much.
Well anyone who is paying attention could tell you that dialup is slowing down in the US. The PC market is saturated, fewer new users every year. (my perception). People are moving from modems to broadband and arent being replaced at the same rate... this really should be a suprise to no one.
IMO, AOL never made 'access the mass internet' their selling point. (I heard that with 8.0 you can't minimize the AOL and open up IE to access sites) Instead they emphasized on instant messages, and exclusive AOL chats and games...stuff the kiddies like. Now the AOL users are getting older, and probably now prefer better connectivity than all the time-wasting games. They dont want their hands held anymore. Perhaps users have been enlightened to using URLS and google instead of "AOL keyword"(tm)
$cat
but at least you said "I heard that..." instead of just repeating the FUD you were told like most people seem to do.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
Amazing. What's the choice a home user has when coming to near-by computer store for byuing new home PC! 1 Ghz PC is a history. Typical HDD is not less than 36GB. 1GB of RAM is no surprise anymore... And "the number one American ISP" is still selling you dial-up access at speed I had in Russia 7 years ago. Amazing.
And pay attention on what they advertise: email, search, surfing - all features are not unique for AOL but belong to Internet as a whole.
I don't see AOL doing any investments to improve structuraly their product/service offers. I thing that their strategy is just to take as much money as they can from dial-up and then to invest money to some business that would be (or already is) absolutely unrelated to ISP market.
Another explanation I see that AOL is still in business is in well known fact that an average American is ignoring everything new as long as possible (compare to Europe or South-East Asia). I won't be wonder if at some day US govt will make a law shutting down dial-up for home users - just to help them with broadband (and to help broadband companies).
AOL is "the looser number one" on American ISP market.
Less is more !
Couldn't one argue that the demise of the AOL monster could cause a boom in the ISP industry as 36 some-odd million people desperately search for a new ISP? Mom-and-pop ISPs could stay in business, mid-level ISPs could afford to roll out more and better broadband, and lowly tech support personnel will be able to keep their jobs and continue to teach old ladies how to reconfigure their Dial-Up Networking.
This could also have an evolutionary effect. The less capable ISPs will crumble under the huge increase in bandwidth and modem usage, while the ones better suited to survive will prosper and flourish in their influx of new capital and customers.
The bankruptcy and shut-down of AOL would also release thousands of IT geeks into the newly-created job market to help these smaller ISPs to ride the wave and help create the next generation of the Internet.
Perhaps one day, with a little help from AOL, the world will be a better place. At least the online one.
"apparently due to users becoming more comfortable with broadband connections."
That's such a great euphamism for users....
"...getting sick of uncontrollable spam"
"...growing tired of a 56k line moving at 33.6k"
"...finding out that instant messaging can be done outside of AOL"
"...discovering that $23.90 per month is a ripoff for a dial-up service"
"...learning that you can get on and off line without clicking 'no thanks' to advertising"
"...finally realizing that they can hookup up to high speed access for another 5 bucks a month without having to deal with bulky client software"
"...trying to set up 'parental controls' to monitor their children, only to find out that it's not a replacement for watching what you kids do"
"...finally getting sick of a TOS policy that amounts to nothing more than idiotic bullshit (I CAN TYPE IN CAPS AND NOT GET KICKED OFFLINE!!)"
I could go on. sadly.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Also lots of people used AOL because they had more dialup numbers than anyone including Compu$erve (The original use of $ in spoofing tech company names based on their formerly multiple-dollars-per-hour billing schemes, for those too young or oblivious to know) but that hasn't been true for a long time, so they'll lose customers there.
Third is the internet with training wheels. Users eventually feel confident enough to take them off, and save ten bucks a month in the bargain.
Finally, AOL is moving away from developing their own internal content, and becoming just another ISP. I guess they feel the internet has reached a critical mass of material which makes it useless to develop subscribers-only content. I disagree entirely, I think that this is the time for MORE subscribers-only content, but whatever.
The point is, AOL is losing everything that it was, as they transition toward being just another ISP. At their prices and with the annoyance of having to use their software to get connected, why would people use AOL>
P.S. It's bullshit that they claim they're not signing people up just to claim they have more members. As long as they are still sending out AOL CDs in the mail willy-nilly, and putting them on counters at the post office (USPS-Flavored AOL, could anything be worse? That's like head cheese flavored SPAM) then clearly they are trying to inflate their numbers to artificial levels; They HAVE to know that more people use and discard those things than use and renew. That might not have been true once, I'm sure they had a pretty good retention rate back in the day, but they can't possibly now.
AOL is dragging TW down. It should be cannibalized for its hardware and its customer base and something entirely different done with both.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
1000+ FREE hours is just marketing - nobody seriously thinks that the fact you can't use it all in 45 days is a "big detractor".
And the new AOL8.0 commercials - with the HappyAOLUser 'propaganda' screenname which is only on-screen for a split-second - isn't any lamer than any of their other "'its so easy!" commercials.
You could have just left that part of your argument out... unless you were trying to be funny and the mods were on crack again.
(disclaimer: I hate AOL but you wouldn't know it from this post).
--
Power to the Peaceful
My Grandmother used to have AOL and when I installed SuSe 8 with her new cable modem connection, (didn't want to spend $299 on new Windows, and needed something better than 95) it was hell calling up AOL to cancel. She had been a loyal, light user for several years -- any ISP would love to have her, AOL not withstanding. It took at least three calls and several "free 3 month" offers to finally get them to cancel.
These people had her so confused she was even doubting me. They basically said she wouldn't be able to save her AOL contacts, or access the same web sites, on her new service without subscribing to the alternative access plan (bring your own access), to use AOL-only services over her cable connection.
Finally after the 3rd call it was done, not without another fight with another rep. They must get paid based upon how many members they can keep from disconnecting. I remember when I had AOL a long time ago when it was the only ISP with a local number, you could cancel as simply as going to keyword: cancel. Now that seems to have changed, and it speaks in their member retention rates as they fight tooth and nail to hold on to the last of their shrinking subscriber base.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95