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AOL Hopes to Change Image With Services
Geoffrey writes "'In an effort to earn a new reputation as a leading Internet destination, AOL will open up to a wider audience on the Web through AOL.com. The portal will re-launch in beta form on Tuesday, offering visitors free Web mail, exclusive audio and video content, and access to a number of AOL services previously available only to subscribers,' reports BetaNews. The new AOL.com will highlight news from the blogosphere, offer free access to 15,000 videos, 130 radio stations, and 20 XM stations. In addition, AOL is launching an RSS aggregator that aims to make RSS actually simple for normal Web users. And unlike MSN's RSS endeavor, My AOL will work in Firefox, Safari and other browsers."
I hate to break the news to you but you are 12 years too late.
I wear a size XXXXL you insensitive clod!
I think that AOL will always have a stigma with geeks of being a piece of crap. And to tell you the truth, I have a bad feeling that this new service set will only confirm that stereotype.
Just need one more referral for a
They want their crappy ISP back.
Trolling the trolls who troll the trolls since '92
" All your RSS are belong to us..."
All your user base are belong to us.
-- The rest of the Internet's ISPs
Does anyone out there think that this will work? Personally, I think that the only thing that has kept AOL from folding is the sheer size of their original user base. But they are dropping off like flies due to broadband.
I would be very surprised if they could pull this off.
Sounds to me like a bait 'n switch. If they're going to offer these free services, rest assured they're going to try and pound a subscription up your ass every step of the way.
I was thinking more like; yaaaaaaaaaaawnnnnn!!!
These services sound nice, but are they also going to add new services for their paid subscribers? Or do they figure they won't care and that isn't the reason people sign up for AOL?
AOL is launching an RSS aggregator that aims to make RSS actually simple
I notice they don't intend to change what kind of users they want to attract. I mean, how hard is it to use RSS these days? it's just one click to install a RSS newsreader (unless they're running into Bezos' patent or something).
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Does this mean that AOL will reduce subscription rates? I mean if they're giving away the good stuff now, why should a subscriber have to keep paying the same amount monthly..?
Everyone will like it because its logo will have the word "Beta" in a cute little font down in the corner.
It's the cool thing to do now, doncha know??
This would be a huge PR coup for AOL as well a boon for the open source community.
I actually got an AOL CD with my newspaper last week-end!
Agile Artisans
Maybe if they didn't make it a bitch to cancel the service, we wouldn't be afraid to try them out again.
Seriously, after canceling from them (I tried it for free for a month); I will never, ever, ever sign up with any of their services ever again.
They like to put you on hold, and then keep offering discounts, and finally they will cancel your account...if your nice to them...after about 25 minutes of bantering back and forth.
That is what ruined it for me. The free CD's don't even bother me.
I am sorry to say this but just because all the services that they are now happily giving away will NOT make them a better service provider. If they could not provide good service to customers who paid 23.95/month how can anyone expect that the free users will get a better service?
I don't understand the constant media attention over the blogging "phenomenon". They've been around since the beginning of the Internet, why is blogging news? Although it will be nice to watch the handful of companies trying to turn a marketing buck from them crash and burn.
Single? Canadian? We can help. Visit http://www.l
Aol is great...great features, great speed, great usefulness, great to pay twice to access the internet which is basically what most users use it for, great brand name...
(fill in Triumph's trademark comment here)
Are they pulling from AOL blogs? I always wanted to have a collection of stories from high school girls about the prom and make-up.
If you are interested in the developments of the RSS reader you can check out some of the blogs by the folks working on the reader such as Steve Rider and Sanaz Ahari.
Disclaimer: I work at MSN"me too"
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
You have the user base
You have the manpower
You have the money.
Now go forth and make yourself into an ISP that doesn't suck.
There is a long road ahead of you though.
Pretty Pictures!
If you really want to change your reputation, here is something you might want to try. It will be difficult for you, but it is well worth it.
STOP SUCKING!
Really. Adding new features that suck and letting everyone use your old sucky features that were previously only available to members does NOT qualify as not sucking any more.
Technoli
I'm not even sure that's really the problem with AOL. Most of these services are already being provided by independant web sites or are rolled into the user homepage of many broadband ISPs. Why bother going to another page to get substandard audio/video feeds when your SBC/Roadrunner/whatever homepage does most (if not all) of that for you? I don't think anybody is really in the mood for another AOL browser on top of this.
Most people I know don't even associate AIM with AOL, and when that's the case, providing content that's been available through other portals for years will be quite a stretch to save the company. Catching up with the times alone will take a lot of work, but they can't be 'as modern as their competitors' to survive. They're going to need to be much more advanced to shoot past everyone else and escape the grim fate that looms overhead.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
AOL with their annoying kiosks and the salespeople hawking over bystanders. I have convinced more than one person to move away from them, right in their salespeoples faces. Their bundled browser/bad service is what drove us geeks away (among many other things). AOL software feels like it was made for pre-schoolers.
--MaxPowerDJ
I think this is a good thing. Why? Because I collect email addresses. I already have two aim accounts (gaim is my best friend!) so there's two new email accounts right there. Add them to the two gmail accounts, two yahoo accounts, a netscape mail account, 5 hotmail addresses, and 3 corporate emails. Now I'm up to 15 email addresses!
Free MacMini
That "AOL is the Internet!" just wasn't enough???
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
Back in the 1990s I went to University by train. My University had many computer science students and most of them took the same train I used to commute to my "Big U".
So what do you do while on a train? Read tech magazines/periodicals of course. (Note: Back then notebook or laptop computers were to freakin expensive for the average CS student. That's right kids, no WLAN back then.)
And in all of those magazines and periodicals there were those "FREE AOL CDs". Tech savy as we were, we knew AOL was crap. So we threw the CDs out of the train windows to get rid of them.
This went on for years, every new week (and month) a new wave of AOL CDs (and only AOL CDs) was thrown out of the train windows by dozens (or even hundrets) of computer science studens...
Even today, on sunny days, you can see some left over CDs from those days on the train tracks. (I am not making this up...)
So, whenever I think about AOL, I think about those free CDs that went right out of the windows. Now freakin way AOL will ever have a good image in my mind... *grin*
All you need to do is put the RSS feed in the bar in firefox and bamo - a pulldown menu with all the news...what could be easier?
AOL has brand name recognition with just about everyone in the U.S. The trouble is, when I think of AOL I think of those stacks of CDs in the Wal-Mart checkout isle and the endcaps at supermarkets. I don't think about any content I'd like to see there, despite the number of "content parters" they've signed up over the years.
It's the same reason Compuserve is such a non-player on the Internet. The industry shifted out from underneath them.
AOL wasted way too much corporate energy convincing their customers that they were the Internet, and didn't expend enough effort drawing in non-AOL dialup users with their content. Didn't they sign up exclusive content, so you couldn't get there unless you subscribed to AOL?
They're now paying for misreading the market, for not realizing that the money was in clicks, not in subscriptions.
sigs, as if you care.
If they stop giving out CDs, it might help. If people are constantly throwing out CDs, they will think the CDs are junk, and associate that with AOL.
They spammed me offering 2gb webmail, I thought it was a scam and deleted it.
--
blank
I don't preview or spellcheck.
AOL is dead, and always will be. You can revive a dead horse. Sorry. Too many years were spent wooing dialup customers and not enough was done to serve broadband customers. Frankly, almost no one in the US uses dialup anymore unless they are living in the sticks or broke.
AOL has and always will have an image as a gated community for people who know literally nothing about computers and the Internet.
Because they turned me down as a beta tester back in 1992 - true story
01/20/09
A few years ago, I'm sure plenty of people told the Google guys that they were a few years too late for making a search engine.
AOL's problem is the Internet-for-beginners stigma that's attached to their name. My bet is the better move would be to dump their millions into a new brand, push their current user base towards it, and hope the non-AOL users will underestimate the connection.
IMO heres why: #1. Your solutions are no longer usable/feasible/needed. Everything you are offering everyone else has and has for a LONG TIME. #2. People arent leaving you b/c you never had these services, they are leaving b/c your service sucks balls, you bill 23.95 for dial up when someone can AT LEAST pay that much for DSL -lite and in turn can get online whenever they want which in turn doesnt make them keep dialing up and dialing up and keeping getting busy signals. #3. Quit LIEING with your ads about AOL for broadband. You dont offer broadband you dimwads, you offer an overbloated piece of crap on top of your already overbloated aol software so someone out there with no sense can pay $10 more to use with a service they are already paying $30 - $40 for, especially for people that have cable. #4 -- even your most loyal user base, including even grandma's are leaving you because they are either doing the research and wisening up themselves or they have geeky grandchildren to tell them how dirty you really are. either way you lose. #5 -- 2003 25.3 Million customers, 2004, 24.0 million, 2005 21.7 million and still counting. i think thats enough said. sure you may add some people to their 'new feature(s), but you will lose many many more. i guess the only bad thing in the end will be if AOL does go belly up will be ALL the people that use AIM..but i guess we could all go to gaim or trillian.
off topic but... I find it amusing that they themselves have realized their PNG alpha issue.. they check for IE, and then load this css
All of these updated features are making me wonder why I would want to pay any kind of premium to use AOL's service over the next best DSL or Cable. Do I want to be price-raped or my internet content to be dumbed down? No? Then why should I ever buy AOL products when I can get them for free on their web portal?
seriously not like theres political forums
we can advance ourselves in huh.
blogs are retarded until we can seriously
do some shit like enders brother.
I tip toe like rats on vouge runnways.
Disclaimer: I work at MSN
Son, you'd best get outta town. Them men over there wit' th' penguins on their jackets just drew a bunch of guns.
Slashdottersville: Where The Good Guys Wear Red Hats
And why do they want to become yahoo? Yahoo who copies google? Aren't there enough of these portal sites anyway? I also believe that its a leap-of-faith for people to say "hmmm, AOL offers all this stuff gratis, so perhaps I should shell out 25 bucks a month for their service to get the same (free) things". This is 1995 thinking. But oh yeah, its AOL.
from TFA: The AOL.com homepage, which is fully compatible with alternate browsers including Firefox and Safari
translation: AOL.com is designed according to web standards.
What are we supposed to do, applaud? This should be a minimal standard for a website, not a feature!
I thought the entire point of subscribing to AOL, aside from the scorn of your company's IT department, was that you were privy to AOL's hot and exclussive content. So now they're delivering 'exclussive' content for free, whatever that means. What does that leave for customers who are paying twice as much money for half as much service? As far as I can tell, the only thing left for the subscribers to get is the shaft.
No Firefox support for live audio/radio >:-P
When are big ISP's going to learn that people don't give a shit about what content they bundle to justify their prices but simply want somewhere to plug in and do whatever they want? Who wants to pay for the sanitized politically correct content of Time Warner?
AOL has a lot of possibilities since they have such a large user base, and "hand-holding" may be good for the extremely non-technical user. However, AOL needs to relinquish some control of the computer if they are to continue as a service.
The only reason anybody liked AOL is because it was so easy once upon a time. Now with technology increasing, and the old people who used AOL dying off, its becoming increasingly useless.
When Time Warner and AOL merged, the word was that AOL was going to become a media mega-empire of the Internet, that we would see all these exclusive and great media services streamed from AOL. You know, wild ideas like watching TV on the Internet and having the ability to send fullscreen video emails to your grandparents with no hassle.
Instead, we have TiVO and Skype and Windows Media Center and the saddest part of it all is AOL is losing out to broadband. Wouldn't that get the IRONIC tag on Fark?
- Bloated Client
- Treating its clients poorly
- Making the dollar its first and highest priority, and being obvious about it.
- Not truly changing with the times, instead just putting a new gloss(and more bloat)to its same, tired, design.
- Using spam type methods to try and hook new users(the famous coasters).
They did this to themselves through years of mismanagement and just settling for the status quo. They forgot they got to the top by out-innovating the competition like compuserve and prodigy, and making a smooth efficient internet portal for the time. Its like what happened to Netscape. Netscape was "the" browser because it was small, fast, efficient, and clean. When it bloated it died and took it mozilla and a reversion to its original design to bring it back.
The question is, can AOL really revert and recover from 10 years of bad reputation? I don't think it ever will.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
"Amateurs On-line","A**Holes On-Line", I'm sure there are far more and far worse. Most experienced Net users associate them with being a low-quality and/or "training whells" type of internet experience. You know, the service you're loathe to admit you used before you know what the Internet was? A name change would go a long way to removing that image.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
They market themselves here in Canada as "AOL Canada" which I always thought was a terrible oxymoron. (This coming from the country with a constitutional monarchy mind you)
I took all their CDs and glued them shiny side up on my wall. The rainbows add a nice touch.
I believe there was a project to dump one million AOL cds in their parking lot one day. Anyone heard if they've progressed?
Hell guys you are flaming this company, and the reason is obviously that it has been poorly managed in a long time. As an european I have no idea how bad it was, but lets wait and see. I mean the more 'content' on the internet, the better, right?
If I hear the buzzword "blogosphere" once more, I think I'm going to vomit!
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I thought for sure their next move would be the classic "Let's offer more free trial hours."
So if all this neat stuff is available via the Web, what's the point of paying them a monthly fee?
the coolest club on
The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.
Bummer. I was actually looking forward to getting email for my sn @ aol.com. How convenient would that be to be able to pretend to be a stupid aol luser when contacting tech support for a company? The options are endless.
AOL, is that thing still around?
Marketroid1:.. ok what about a web page with links to music, chat, videos..
Marketroid2:..Yeah! email too!
Marketroid1:..and we can have adverts and pop-ups, we'll make a shitload of money
Marketroid2:Hmmmmm....lets call it a....WEBPORTAL!
Lawyer1: A "Webportal", I advise we patent it immediately!
ALthough there are plenty of portals on the web now, i still think there is a place for one done right. IF AOL could leverage its content from Timewarner, then i think it could be a great portal. For example, Adult Swim is a AOL-Timewarner(i know thats the old name) property. This if the adult swim website was in this AOL portal. The BIG problem is doing this right. Which means CLEAN INTERFACE (please aol copy what google does). Usefull content and access to content all over the web (like google news). Good email (umm like gmail). The biggest thing for me is i just want a simple, clean interface. I actually like the good personal homepage they have set up, clean and usefull. If AOL can make it clean and usefull, with exclusive content (designed towards broadband users), Then this would be great. I doubt they will do it, but i think there is a place for that
...(don't ask why I was still using it, I sorta had a reason) but when they asked why I was cancelling, I said because they were the worst ISP around right now. The poor guy (I think he was in India, but not sure) said "I'll just check the 'too expensive' box, OK?"
that was their most valuable service to me, back before they allowed their customers onto newsgroups and irc.
i'll throw a few bucks at that if they'd start that again...
In 1978 everyone had to have a CB radio. In 2000 everyone had to be in an IRC chatroom. In 2005 everyone has to have a blog. Same sh*t, different box.
My AOL will work in Firefox, Safari and other browsers
It works, but the layout of http://startpage.aol.com/beta.adp is seriously b0rked in Safari. Text layout is the biggest problem - text overflowing the little graphical boundaries on the page, horrible vertical alignment, etc.
Here's a screen shot. Not pretty at all. Submitting it to Browsershots (screen shots of a site rendered in all major browsers) should be interesting.
"Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
-- Ryan Stiles
Thank you, AOL! I think this is a really good idea!! I'm sure lots of people will come over to AOL now!!! Yay for AOL!!!! Now undoubtedly the best ISP ever!!!!!
... I'll bet there's some freaking awesome Smashing Pumpkin and Nirvana bootlegs in there! And nekkid pictures of Tiffany Amber Thiessen!
Now, maybe, finally, we can have our newsgroups back after AOL chokes and dies. It's only been, what, 12 years since the black day they opened up the newsgroup feed
Party on, Wayne!
Party on, Garth!!
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Geoffrey should do some more research, because start.com v1 does indeed support Firefox. Newer versions are supposedly soon to follow. And the project isn't even ready yet. And what's so special about AOL offering an RSS reader, like there already aren't a ton of them out there (and I'm talking about the ones with a web interface). Doesn't it kill you to see AOL dropping it's pants by the way? Wow... what a sad way to go out!
Mozilla stole tabs from NetCaptor. So what? Right?
I always thought that AOL was a "beverage coaster" vendor.
Check out newsisfree.com
I've been using it for a couple of years and it's great! There's free and subscription service.
My dad has AOL, I had AOL many years back. They give you excellent financial analysis data on companies not available free on the internet (those pay for reports...). Or at least they did 4 years ago.
Thats the only thing I can think of.
Most of the content they offered when I tried, could easily be gotten from somewhere else.
You bought Nullsoft, the creators of Winamp... and then laid off most of their employees. I'm sorry, but I will NEVER trust you again.
...they're going to try and pound a subscription up your ass every step of the way.
Ever been to GoDaddy and tried to get *JUST* a domain? Oh yeah, fun times ahead...
I know exactly what you mean.
Although, I figured they would have saved an announcement this important for September
Three words: Army of Lamers
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
I just died in your arms last night.
To AOL:
If perhaps you would pull your heads out of the sand and realize that you have the WORST REPUTATION FOR SHADY BILLING PRACTICES of any major ISP in the US, you just *might* have an inkling of a chance of survival. Everyone I know knows that AOL is to be AVOIDED AT ALL COSTS because of how horribly, inexcusably difficult AOL makes it for someone to cancel their account. I warn anyone I care at all about NOT to subscribe to AOL for EXACTLY this reason!!! And as a trusted IT professional, I will tirelessly continue speaking against you until you decide to stop stealing from people who wish to cancel their subscriptions. You've caused many of my friends and family grief, so I take this quite personally.
If you are struggling, AOL, if you are losing subscribers, then I am PROUD to say I feel I personally had something to do with it. Stop cheating America, AOL, and maybe America will forgive you!!!
Safari already has a built in RSS reader that I'm pretty sure is better than anything AOL is going to dish out.
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
From average joes like me.
I tried to contact them twice in the last year (once in the last month after the NyTimes had a big article on what Aol was up to).. but still no responce.
There situation is typical of most rich people/corps.. they are fat, and they aren't going to anything the don't want until they HAVE-TO.
The problem with that is, alot of people cut-their-teeth with aol and still rely on it for their internet access. So not only do the share-holders have a say, but the average person who has an affinity for Aol, or is in *need* of it for net access, has a say as well. After all, if they were to *go-under* in alot of areas, many people would have NO access!
Unfortunatly, aol executives don't believe this way.
My advice to them was simple:
1) STOP giving your services away (ie. like they are now with these paid services that they are currently ABLE to get a paid subscription for, but have decided to *give-it-away*.... great idea!! (not).
2)Instead of giving people 1 or 2 months *free* internet access, charge at least a couple of bux. This would not only *stop-the-bleeding*, but it would actually help them to *make-money* (something they have LONNNG forgot the meaning of). It would also stop the people who just use the service freely with absolutely no intent of paying down the road. Not to mention the money it would save if they stopped sending those stupid cd's to EVERYONES mail box several times a year! Or maybe just send the cd's to areas of the country that lack net access (or competition of).
3) Invest and work with local and regional companies/governments on setting up WireLess nets (since this is where the future is apparently). And drop the fraudlent advertisment of *HighSpeed* connections over copper (noone likes to be lied to blatently).
4) This is the most important one of all; when someone writes.. out-of-concern and affection for your company.. at least have the courtesy to have a robot mailing system reply so that you know they got the email! It is the RUDEST thing in the world to ignore someone when they *vent*, but it is absolutley illogical and imature to *not-even-respond* when someone is trying to help.
I'm asumming tho, with the other aspects of Aol's *attititude*, that they simply ignore emails, just like other major media outlets do.. simply because they only want to see how many people *respond* when they do/don't do something, and then calculate/factor that into their *marketing* figures to try and guess how many people are listening/looking at their programming.
A O L = Anyone Out-there Listening?
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
I can hardly wait to get my copy on CD!
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
The unofficial
. . . is meeting fat chicks in chat rooms.
Becoming a web portal is the last stage a tech company goes through before dying (see Netscape, Dejanews, etc.). AOL fails at it.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
I just tried out the beta version of the new aol start page at http://startpage.aol.com/beta.adp and it looks like a nice interface for your average web user.
Its not that complicated, the ads don't scream at you too much...and it is customizable.
That being said, it is still a "me-too" start page experience. AOL is going to have to offer more than an email account to be profitable.
AOL has always provided two rather valuable services. The first is that it got a lot of people using the internet who otherwise wouldn't have. This has lead to a lot of good things overall.
The second thing AOL has done, with perhaps mixed success, is to act as a sandbox and aggregate all of the worst, most clueless (l)users and sort of partition them off from the rest of the net. They have their own "web" of aol sites, their own chatrooms, etc. I shudder to think of the state of IRC if the AOL users all used it instead of their own rooms.
Some of the users spend the rest of their lives never knowing there is anything outside the sandbox, and others become a little less clueless before switching to a "real" ISP.
The problem is that AOL is expensive, and it's software is buggy and bloated. Because of this, a lot of people who still need to be in the sandbox are pushed, pulled, or dragged out of it onto the "real" net.
But now out of the sandbox, they begin to pollute the rest of the net, which is where I see this new direction of AOL comming in handy. If they can offer this as a sort of second sandbox, then maybe it will keep the (l)users out of our hair for a bit longer until they are ready to play with everyone else.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
http://radaol-prod-web-rr.streamops.aol.com/radio/ radioclient/usbb/html/sorry.html
Attention Firefox Users:
Currently AOL Radio does not support Firefox. Please come back next month, when Firefox support will be available.
Here's the thing about AOL... my mom tried to cancel their service for 2 years. They threatened to bring legal action against us. We did nothing but say we wanted to cancel. Similar stories from all friends that have tried to cancel. Moral: as long as I live, AOL will not get another customer from any of my friends.
AOL just needs to take all Time Warner Video Content put it on the net and secure with AOL DRM!!!! DOH...
Why do I need Windows to listen to Internet radio? Gay.
Macintosh humor! MacComedy.com
I was trying out this new site i heard about AOL.com and everything was great for awhile but then internet explorer started acting funny, as well as couple of the things. I tried to uninstall it and then my internet connection stopped working at all. please help, i really need my email.
>>Sig under construction
Little Billy and Mary surfer are more savy web users nowadays. Bye Bye AOL.
Select expert mode near the beginning of the purchase process, or use their bulk interface. No garbage, ~3 steps.
AOL has always been "training wheels for the internet."
It always improves a twelve year old's image when he removes his training wheels . .
hawk
Wow. I hadn't checked the sight in several years. Certainly didn't remember the site being that ugly.