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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.'"
We won't get as many free coasters anymore?
It should be noted though that AOL has said it has stopped simply signing up new customers for the sake of counting them.
Is this an admission that the hundreds of CDs each and everyone here will have recieved were just a stunt to get the numbers up?
One Evil Empire beginning to crumble, one more to go....
Here's a better article from the Washington Post.
It should be noted that, 'Despite the small decline in the number of AOL subscribers in the United States during the fourth quarter, the total number of subscribers grew enough during the other nine months of the year to enable America Online to post a 1.2 million net increase in customers during 2002.'
Also, AOL is still by far the number one ISP with 26.5 million U.S. customers to MSN's 9 million.
"Assholes always advertise."
Days of Atonement, Walter John Williams
No worries, this will hold true for the forseeable future.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
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
*nix.org -- BSD, Linux, OS X, & Solaris community
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
Of course, I could be wrong...
I think that a few of you can relate to this: I don't make a heck of alot of money off my single, constant IT job. This forces me to do alot of consulting for everyone from small businesses to "Joe User". Joe User still doesn't have or need much understanding about computers, and still prefers the simplistic experience that is AOL. Until another major ISP can offer the ease of use that AOL can for a significantly lower cost (unlike MSN), then most AOL userrs have no incentive to switch.
For its part, AOL has said it has stopped simply signing up new customers for the sake of counting them.
Well, this disproves the "To them, you are not just a number" Theory.
Signed,
24783
...oOOo..'(_)'..oOOo...
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?
(30 seconds later)Jeebus! I finally got it to parse: "AOL used to sign up new members, not because it would increase revenue, but because it would increase their total number of subscribers (which presumably had some marketing value on its own). They have stopped this, and now expect to make money from their users." Someone, please explain the concept of scope ambiguity to the author of that article!!!
AOL's recent ad campaign for their AOL 8.0 service has to be the direct reason for the drop in subscribers. Let's do the math:
In one scene, where a "dad" talks about setting up the parental controls for his "kids," a shot of the screen is shown with three users listed. The first user in the list (name unknown, and doesn't matter) is shown as having Adult access. The second user on this list is the key. First of all, the user name is HappyAOLUser, and is shown as having Older Teen access. First of all, what Teenager in their right(?) mind would use HappyAOLUser as their screen name? None. And secondly, is there such a thing as a Happy AOL User? I haven't met any...
Here's the big detractor. Their offer boasts 1,025 hours free for the first 45 days. Let's do the math. There are 24 hours in a day, right? OK. So, let's multiply that by 45. The answer is 1,080 hours. Now, we subtract from that the 1,025 hours offered for free. We get 55 hours. Divide those 55 hours by the original 45 days, and you get 1.2222222r. So, in order to use up all of the 1,025 hours in 45 days, a single AOL user would only be able to get 1.22222r hours of sleep per day in the 45 day period.
Simply put, either the user doesn't get to use all of the free hours, or they die from sleep deprivation trying to get them all in.
Couple this with the slowly growing demand for broadband, AOL's lack of local servers (resulting in long distance bills for some users), and the frequent busy signals encountered, you have your reason for people migrating away from AOL.
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
From http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_2100-1023-983012. html:
...
Microsoft's MSN Internet service reported zero net subscriber growth in the fourth quarter of 2002, holding steady at 9 million subscribers despite the backing of a $350 million advertising campaign for its new MSN 8 service. The company said the lack of growth was offset by a shift to higher-paying customers as various incentive offers came to a close in the last three months of the year.
Earthlink, the third-largest ISP in the United States, has also seen declines in its dial-up business. The company this week announced massive cutbacks at the company as it moved to outsource its customer-support call centers.
The number of free subscribers on the service dropped from 2.9 million in the third quarter to 2.5 million in the fourth.
That statement is pretty unclear, what they meant was that AOL is not signing up free trial customers in the same numbers just to keep their subscriber count growing. The drop was in the number of non-paying trial customers, that account for about 10% of their US subscriber base of about 26 million. They have another 8 in Europe, and the rest are mostly in Latin America. Thier paid subscriber base actually increaseed during the quarter, I believe. The full details are all in their quarterly conference call available on the corporate web page, for at least another week or so.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
$15 a month for all the sex you can get is TOO MUCH?
Oh, wait, this has got to be a
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
AOL are a large international ISP (or IAP in legal terms) whose product is exempt from VAT in Britain, allowing them some headway in undercutting their rivals. They offer an unmetered dialup service from (virtually) any UK address although metering may be involved if your phone line is provided by one of the more unscrupulous telco's (e.g. the ones in many university halls of residence).
They do not require you to use proprietary email or browser software. They do not disconnect you after a period of inactivity. They do not block any ports, although they transparently re-route outgoing SMTP traffic. Their services are about equal or slightly better in performance than FreeServe (now that's an evil company if ever there was one). Having said all this, their service is occasionally completely shit, connecting at a snails pace and dropping you into limbo usually in the middle of a fraught deathmatch. Most of the time it is OK however.
Apparently, allowing non-computer-literate people to use the internet (or at least the pertinent popular-interest subset thereof) is some kind of deeply offensive crime in the eyes of some technical people. A few years ago there was an arguable basis for such objections, but now it seems rather like snotty received prejudice. Especially when you consider that AOL is the cheapest (or only) option for unmetered internet access in some parts of this country.
Their much-maligned corporate anthropomorphisation, Connie, is played on television by model Rachel Willis, who is the sister of one of my ex-flatmates.
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
A rather old cartoon, but it makes scence
Dad vs. AOL
YarrRrr
"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.'"
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