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AOL to be Split into 4 Units
unsupported writes "AOL is apparently dividing into four units to provide a clear direction for each. The four divisions are as follows: Audience (Advertising, and AOL IM, Moviefon, Mapquest, Netscape.com), Access (dial-up, highspeed), AOL Europe (for the foreigners), and Digital Services (Premium services, phone and music subscription). "
They form the lamest robot in the entire universe... AOLtron!
I was so worried about their financial well being! I'm nearly out of coasters.
"AOL is apparently dividing into four units to provide a clear direction for each. The four divisions are as follows: Audience (Advertising, and AOL IM, Moviefon, Mapquest, Netscape.com), Access (dial-up, highspeed), AOL Europe (for the foreigners), and Digital Services (Premium services, phone and music subscription)."
None of which will regain profitability.
Does this mean I can get four times as many drink-coasters every month? I just moved into a bigger place, so I need some.
Seriously though, will this provide newfound independence for the Netscape folks, and newfound options for the browsers associated with them? Or will it just be a management shift that has no practical effect on the rest of the world?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
The last thing AOL needs is a focused advertising unit.
AOL still has a few more years left in them. Cable and DSL haven't quite become ubiquitous, and there are enough people in the "heartland" who aren't familiar enough with the Internet to know better.
Their new commercials purport to make the Internet better - that's the market AOL has to reach, people who think their software is the Internet.
It doesn't have much longer, though. Education will put AOL to a slow death unless they drastically reform their business to revolve around the things they do get right (like messaging) instead of "access" and "customer support" (both in scare quotes for obvious reasons).
AOL was marketed as an ISP for non technical people. This justified that added expense. Most families these days have at least one member who know at least a little bit about computing and sees that AOL is not needed. Its cheaper to get access from someone else and add the features you want. I suppose its because the internet has been around long enough for the general public (say 10 years of real viable public access?) so that either the adults have taken an interest or they have kids who know a great deal about it all. Seriously, AOL is just not worth the added expense. This new racket about including free anti-virus and spyware blocking is not going to change anything. Breaking into four main organisation is not the answer either. What they need to do is set their prices competitively and get some innovative content.
and its secret weapon is repeatedly firing fast rotating 30-day trial discs. OH THE HORROR!
My first thought at seeing the headline.
i thought printing & shipping CDs was their main task
The big whoop is they probably paid some management consultancy group a library of congress sized amount of money to formalize what they were already doing under the guise of a complete management reorganisation.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
EOL stands for "end of life", but that's what we'd all want, right?
Anyway, "AOL" is a brand name, an opaque identifier. European subscribers seem to associate "AOL" with a specific online service provider rather than with the words "America Online", just as they associate "DSL" with "high-speed Internet access provided over the phone line" rather than with the words "digital subscriber line".
Restructuring seems to be the way Boards of Directors justifies layoffs, blaming the placement of the "walls" for poor performance, rather than looking at lacking innovation, morale, and business savvy.
Besides the already-commented-about possibility of selling off parts, in this day and age the notion of dividing up divisions of a company differently just seems to fly in the face of the path of the enlightened employer of the 21st century.
By segmenting into distinct groups, you facilitate the blame game and hamper communication. This kind of restructuring certainly isn't what you do to revitalize.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Microsoft tried a related split up. However, they couldn't find a way seperate the Internet Explorer from Windows.
__
This was a lame attempt to be funny.
I think its mostly to create some buzz amongst the investors and shareholders, who think a reorganization means increased efficiency and therefore huge profits. Plus, it allows for new banners with fancy slogans and missions statements to be hung on the wall, and to keep everyone up to date on the latest corporate slang (a reorganization is really nothing more than lots of little paradigm shifts to better utilize the synergistic capabilities of our capital-index work force, etc)
The 4 units will be named:
- Overcharging
- Limiting/Reducing Quality of Service
- Cancellation Deflection/Avoidance
- Demo CD Manufacturing and Distribution
Not to worry, they will all be guided by AOL's core mission: TO SUCK!
AOL probably already operated this way anyway, so what's the big whoop?
The biggest difference is that all the old infighting and contempt is offical, and can be reported on and monitered since it must cross interdepartmental divisions. Previously it was hard to track since it was intradepartemental.
Wars and power struggles are much more open. Further, it provides a new battlefield - all the commanders welcome this change since the wars were getting rather stale and predictable. Hopefully the new revolution will be streamed.
-Adam
You didn't care enough to RTFA, but you cared enough to post telling us how much you don't care. Thus showing us how much you do care. You care enough to not care, but are very passionate about your not caring. You want us to care that you don't care. Or perhaps you want us to care how much you care that you don't care? Well, buddy, I just wanted you to know that I care about wheather you wanted us to care about you not caring or wanted us to care about you caring about not caring. And I hope that everyone else cares about me caring about you either wanting us to care about you not caring or wanting us to care about you caring about you not caring. Just thought I'd write this to let you all know I care.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Apparently prayer does work, as AOL has finally drawn and quartered itself.
Eventually, it will reduce itself to 64 small startup sized companies, 63 of which will fail. Just what I've always wanted to see: a living example of the DotCom bubble in reverse.
What's next? Maybe Microsoft will join them in self-dismemberment?
(Pray early, pray often...)
TLR
A man no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company
TimeWarner is not the problem. The problem is AOL is trying to compete in the exact same space as MSN and will always lose. MSN is able to better integrate into Windows. MSN will always be the first choice on the OS.etc, etc, etc.
AOL needs to learn to carry the fight to a different battleground; basically a neutral ground.
- Make Firefox/Mozilla the default (with MSIE an option)
- Provide OpenOffice on their system.
- Start using a media system that is on multiple systems. The ogg line is certainly a choice as are a number of others.
Then allow customers to run that for about a year. Finally, create a Linux distro for the home user that includes all the above. They can call it AOS. It will enable them to compete.What they need to do, but they will not do it. History simply repeats itself.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Microsoft opposed being forced into becoming multiple companies. AOL isn't doing that - they are just formalizing internal business units. I think this will be good for them in that it could give VP's more power make decisions independent of the other units. I'm sure Microsoft already does this. Of course, this would make it simpler to split into seperate companies in the future and make it more obvious if that were a good idea.
A newly appointed CEO has a conversation with the man he is replacing. The new guy asks, "what advice can you give me?". The old dog opens up a drawer and pulls out three envelopes.
"When you get into trouble the first time, open up letter number one and do what it tells you. When it happens again, use letter number two. And when it happens the third time, read letter number three."
With that, the old dog laughs and walks out the building.
A month later the new CEO is on the hotseat for missing the quarterly EPS mark. Right before the earnings conference call he reads letter number one - 'Blame me'. So the new CEO goes to the mike, blames the old CEO for bad management, and everyone walks away optimistic.
Three months later, the new CEO is on the hotseat again. He reads letter number two - 'Reorganize' So the new CEO tells everyone that the company is going to do a massive reorganization "to realign our business units with our core market paradigms.". The reporters grumble but accept the idea that the company is now on the right track.
Three months later, the new CEO is yet again facing major difficulties. He reads the last letter. 'Get three envelopes.'
*buhbumpbump*
I used to work for a major Aircraft Flight Simulator company headquartered in Kirkwood NY. The company used to be refered to as the "Cadillac of Flight Simulators"
Toward the end, the company was re-organizing every few months. The employees commonly referred to these re-organizations as the equivalent of rotating 4 bald tires. This was a running joke during the final days of the company.
A year earlier, the company conducted company wide quality training sessions. During the training we were taught that frequent re-organizations were a sign of a failing company. Needless to say, the re-organizations were not successful in bringing the company back to life.
The company was sold and resold several times in the years that followed. The last I heard, is that telemarketers now occupy the building that used to be occupied by Engineers.