AOL Subscribers Finding Greener Pastures

Mitch writes "The Register is reporting that America Online has lost close to 2 million customers since September 2003. At the end of September they had 22.7 million customers in the US which was down more than 500,000 since the beginning of the quarter. This news comes one day after it was announced that more than 700 jobs would be cut from Virginia offices by the end of this year."

Comments

And the burning questions remain

[kalpol]

Why do the remaining 20 million stay? There is nothing on AOL that can't be accessed from the internet at half the cost.

Re:And the burning questions remain

[nospmiS remoH]

I pay $26.95 for a 3Mbit down / 256 Kbit up over cable. I remember in the early 90's when I was first exposed to a locak dialup and I literally said outloud, "Well then, why does anyone need AOL anymore?" I thought AOL's days were numberd but I never knew that number was in the thousands.

Life lesson => Never underestimate the ignorance of pretty much everyone.

watch the commercials

[mshultz]

You seen those AOL commercials that began to show up a few weeks ago (during the baseball playoffs and world series)?

I never understood why AOL thought it would be a good idea to show a roaring mob of millions of customers outside company headquarters with ideas for "how to improve the Internet." I guess these ads show a pretty accurate picture of their recent status, with that many customers leaving...

Re:Lite Client

[Jim Hall]

Maybe they should stop focusing on "Making the internet better" and make it less cumbersome for their users.

Their last round of commercials doesn't help that image. My personal favorite is the one that implies all the AOL users hate the service. You know the one - long line of AOL users, asking to see the president because they have an idea on "making the internet better". And the line becomes a huge crowd of people outside.

A non-technical friend of mine saw that commercial, and his immediate impression was "Wow, AOL must _really_ suck if everyone hates it that much." That certainly seems to be the message they're sending with that ad.

AOL demographics

[Andy_G_Bannister]

Does anybody know of any studies on the demographics of AOL customers? My hunch, from those I know who use it, togeher with AOL advertising (I'm in the UK), would be that it tends to be:

(a) Net newbies who then keep renewing their service
(b) Older folks who like a bit of hand-holding

This is not meant to be derogatory --- I'm simply curious as to who these millions are and why they stick with a service that is slow, cumbersome and expensive.

Re:Define "customer"

[pixelpusher220]

Add this to the equation...I've got an AOL acct I've had for probably 10-12+ years. I don't actualy use it much anymore save for the screenname for AIM and chatting. Now that I've gotten around to cancel it, guess what...I'll lose my AIM name if I cancel the service.

I *know* this used to be allowed but AOL stopped it to prevent the bleeding of even more people who now only want the free AIM service.

Since I use that name for damn near everything, work/family/friends, it's really too much hassle to switch it to another name at this point so I'm down to the 4.95/month option that keeps the email and chat active but no realy other features (a good thing).

Any thoughts as to the anti-trust aspects of this? They offer a free service, I want to downgrade to that free service but I'm told that because I started with AOL instead of AIM (which didn't exist back then) I can't just have an AIM account now (with the same name). If I had started with AIM, then signed on to AOL, and then wanted to go back to AIM they *say* I'd be able too. Anyone here done that?