Slashdot Mirror
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."
That the September finally ended?
Why do the remaining 20 million stay? There is nothing on AOL that can't be accessed from the internet at half the cost.
12:50 - press return.
sending out those free coasters, they'd save some money and not have to fire staff.
Maybe they should stop focusing on "Making the internet better" and make it less cumbersome for their users. Each version is so much worse than the last. And why are they still using IE at the core when they own the development of the world's best browser???
Sound waves should be free!
People would rather pay $50 and have broadband than close to $30 and have dial up. While you can use AOL over broadband, what's the point?
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
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...
Middle management's first and only answer to each new day in business: fire hundreds of people, preferably by entire departments.
Of course, AOL is still making over $400 million a month in subscriber revenue, but it's always better to have mass layoffs, as every middle manager knows. Fire 'em all. Layoffs by the hundreds. Destroyed careers. Destroyed credit. Savings lost. Years of effort flushed down a shitpipe. Who the fuck cares? The business must maintain their earnings and 20% annual growth.
Disney fired 4000 people between nine-figure summer movie releases, then destroyed an entire animation studio, firing 250 with unique abilities and experience. Walt Disney was very proud of the fact most of his employees had worked for Disney their entire careers. Now, the company can't wait to fire people every quarter. It's the way of business.
This isn't capitalism. It's budgeting by layoffs.
Careers are meaningless. Everyone is a temp. W-4 employment is a farce.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Here are some news: it seems that AOL is going to cut some jobs in europe (France) too.5 ,39181152,00.htm
http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/business/0,3902071
le souvenir d'une certaine image n'est que le regret d'un certain instant (M.Proust)
Netzero has been doing some very effective advertising for about a year. AOL did nothing, no changes in service, no advertising, no competitive rates, etc.
Now, AOL just started advertising, claiming value added services.
They're still going nowhere, at the end of the day the average consumer cares nothing about services, they want a cheaper price.
AOLs only alternative that I can see is to purchase netzero, but don't migrate their userbase. Continue to be netzero, and if you loose customers from AOL, BFD. You'll be getting less profit per customer, but at least you'll still the the recurring revenue.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see AOL crash and burn, but they _do_ have a niche.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
For many AOL users AOL _is_ the internet. As more become educated they relealize they have been duped by clever marketing. When friends demonstrate broadband technolgies which, remarkably, access the "AOL" internet with freedom and speed they wake up.
They're all moving over to their local cable and telephone companies. Which have even lower security than AOL. Expect more worms, viruses, and general whackiness than when AOL was between them and the Wild Wild Net
Best Slashdot Co
Compared to past years, my MTA logs for my company have shown a HUGE decline in inbound chain letters, and nested FWDs of FWDs of FWDs of FWDs of FWDs of FWDs of FWDs of FWDs of FWDs of FWDs of FWDs of FWDs of FWDs of FWDs of FWDs of ...
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
Many AOL "customers" aren't actually customers at all, but rather, people who think AOL=Internet, MS-Word and Windows are the same thing, and that their monitor is 'the computer' while the computer case is 'the hard drive'. AOL isn't losing actual customers, they're losing people who washed up there because they clicked on something when they booted their BestBuy PC for the first time. These people are simply moving to Broadband, or any one of the $6/month ISPs, or DSL, or something else.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
(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.
Kind of funny. Kind of elitist.
I think that the average user is getting more EDUCATED, not more intelligent. Lemme give you an example. Today at work, we receive approximately 27,000 metric tons of information about changes to our health care plan. I consider myself relatively intelligent, with a good amount of education. However, the volumes of information are not in my realm of expertise. The HR folks seem to think we should be able to absorb all this information and make an intelligent choice for our families within two weeks.
For someone who is absorbed in this stuff, this is probably very straightforward. To someone who is in the tech field, understanding service providers, and "what the internet is" is relatively trivial.
The danger becomes that or profession looks down on the majority of folks who don't have a clue. It isn't because they are stooopid. It is because the mechaniscs of the computer world does not interest them. Our job is to serve those folks, help them to make better choices, make it EASIER to make those choices.
Overall, I think we've done well, but then there are posts like this, which I HOPE are the minority.
If we all had the same gifts, this wold be a boring world.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
For me, the best ISP is the one I notice the least. Basically, I want a reliable pipe to the internet, for as little cost as possible. Nothing more and nothing less.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Yes thats all I want too, but AOL isnt aimed at the /. crowd. As someone said before, AOL is aimed at Joe and Jane Sixpack, who are too afraid of what lurks on the wire or to clueless too know any better. And frankly, thoes kinds of users need something like AOL to help them take their baby steps onto the web.
Please let them fire the person who keeps sending me those $%*# disks.
Read any good sonnets lately?