Slashdot Mirror
CEO Calls For AOL Paradigm Shift
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times is reporting that Jonathan Miller, AOL's chief executive, is calling for the effective dismantling of marketing for their dialup service. In a new plan to be presented to the Time Warner board in a couple of weeks, Miller outlines a new direction for AOL which moves towards using advertising as the main source of revenue while offering most everything they have (software, AOL.com email addresses, etc) for free."
Does that mean AOL will continue to lead the world in spam?
My lack of God, it's Trotsky!
Free is still too expensive.
Disable the log-out button.
Yes, you can dance to Radiohead.
That will seem very enticing....until they start flooding the internet with more of their spam. They are using the existing setups to beat google to the free internet punch. Oh well call this AOLs deathsong. They are pretty much on the way out with a declining userbase. Poor product being made free? It's like putting a cherry on a pile of crap. The cherry may taste good but the crap wont :P
Good call AOL! You go! Why stop with just dial-up? They've got plenty of services we'd all like to see dismantled! ...
Like all of them.
AOL news on Slashdot is like 7up news on a champagne tasting forum.
You think cancelling AOL is hard when they charge for services?
Think how much harder it would be to "cancel" when it becomes free.
My god, I hope they still give away CDs! I may never finish decorating my dorm now...
FTFA: Under the new plan, almost everything AOL offers -- its content, software and AOL.com e-mail addresses -- will be available to any Web user free.
Even my mother who has had broadband for only a year now knows user@aol.com == newbie. She knows better than to pay attention to mails from there declaring "Important, new email virus alert!!!" as these people are still wet behind the ears.
Given the number of CDs AOL has sent out, and the negative response to their bloated dial-up software, I don't think people will be scrambling to aol.com to get their hands on the latest.
So why would anyone go to AOL.com? The article leaves me unconvinced. About the only thing I can agree with is the CEO's statement about it is going to get worse (before it gets better, but there is no guarntee of that)
Simple question: How is AOL at all relevant, going forward? Regardless of this paradigm shift or not.
More like refocusing on what actually makes AOL profitable. We knew this was coming when we saw AOL ad-words on superbowl commercials, and REALLY knew it was coming with the 10% Google aquisition. Can you really blame them for no longer competing in the sub $25/month dialup when FIMUX and muni wi-fi networks easily bring in close to 2X that per month for broadband after taking out TCO?
AOL sucks. We all know this. So they think that providing their services for free, in an advertising based model will help them. It probably will. I think it misses the point, though. How many stories have we heard about their terrible support, lacking features, and inability to change with the market? They should probably focus on providing a great product before they make it free. Free crap is still crap.
Yes, you can dance to Radiohead.
So...AOL users will finally get their money's worth?
"In May 2006, 14.8 billion pages were viewed on AOL's branded service -- by both paying users and others -- down 27 percent from a year earlier, according to comScore MediaMetrix. In the same period, Yahoo's page views increased by 10 percent, to 38.1 billion."
Here's a clue: try improving the quality rather than lowering the price. Actually, chances are that AOL's stuff isn't that bad (/. bashers aside) but just the fact that it says "AOL" on it gives people a certain predisposition against it. So, a second clue: try honestly rebranding yourself to improve market perception. If McDonald's can do it, AOL can too.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
No More AOL CDs, while they may accomplish the goal of stopping CDs from being sent out, may not be able to achieve that goal of rolling up to AOL HQ with a million CDs.
Today, I felt a great disturbance in the force...
It was as if millions of mail carriers suddenly cried out, then, peaceful silence.
And just stop doing anything except billing credit cards. How would that be different?
As someone who works in publishing, this seems symptomatic of what is a very disturbing trend to me. Somebody has to pay for content. Popular wisdom is that the consumers of that content won't pay for it. There's only one other place to go for the money, it seems, and that's advertisers.
I don't know how to feel about it. I'm somebody who hates ads. I watch a lot of PBS, tend to rent shows on DVD rather than watch them when broadcast on commercial television, or if I do watch them, I skip the ads in my DVR. Likewise, I run AdBlock and an aggressive set of filters in Firefox. My goal is to see no advertisements at all. Ironically, however, those same ads are my livelihood. Am I cutting my own throat?
Even scarier is the fact that all the movie and TV studios are aware of this behavior and are taking steps to correct for it. Product placement, for example -- it's no coincidence that guy is drinking a Coke and not a Pepsi, or that there's a big RSA Security logo on that video monitor in that episode of "24."
So if we don't want to pay for our content, and we refuse to be receptive to traditional advertising messages, how long before that kind of influence gains a foothold in other kinds of media? I work in the trade press, so we're right on the cusp of that -- some people will never believe that a story in my magazine is meant to be impartial, no matter what it says. But does anyone really think the mainstream news media -- even something like the New York Times -- is completely impervious?
I really, really do not want to live in the kind of world where every flat surface is paved with an ad, every movie is a sales vehicle, every TV show is a survey, every newspaper article is corporate public relations. But is it avoidable, given the direction our society is going?
Breakfast served all day!
All I can say about this "Jonathan Miller" is that he's an incredible visionary and way ahead of his time.
For those unfamiliar with his vision for the future, Mr. Miller would replace our telephone modulator-demodulators with an "Ethernet" entering the home over thick black cables -- or perhaps even copper telephone wiring!
Anyone the world over could view America OnLine's pictures through an interconnected "Web" of compters independent of the company. They could even manipulate America OnLine's own computers to "search" this "Web!" How very generous!!
This new vision for inter-networking has already caught on with the kids, who have crowned it "CyberWeb 2.0" or somesuch.
I would explain further, but I must telegraph my stockbroker posthaste, to see if we can't convince this America OnLine to detach itself from old Time Inc. and sell off its own shares! It's growth potential is simply ex-plosive!
Posting via dictaphone,
Charles Fornwall Huston XII
"Dismantling of marketing" "towards using advertising" ?
AOL = Advertisements On Line
10.0 Free Advertisement Edition
[as opposed to Advertisement Free Edition]
Brilliant!
as they no long have to build a new landfill just for AOL cds and packaging. As least with the disks I could use them. How much more would CD-RW have cost?
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
They can start by avoiding the words "Paradigm Shift".
Many years ago, MSN network beat them at it.
They are just now relying on ads as their main source of revenue? Back when I used AOL, their ads were pervasive to the point of being annoying. Everyone I know that uses AIM thinks the number of ads are annoying.
So, what they are saying is that it will only get more annoying as they bump off dial-up. Great plan, AOL.
If AOL wanted to swap from service revenue to an ad revenue, they shouldn't have been shoving as many ads down people's throats before the switch.
Is it just me or is this advertising bubble about to burst? Well, this may not happen in the immediate future. But one has to think about how many services on the internet are driven by advertisements. How and when do you think this model will change?
I find it amusing how it took the behemoth of a company this long to realize that charging nearly 25-dollars-a-month for dial-up access is ridiculous. Of course, they tried to up-sell their "premium content" all of which could be had for free elsewhere on the world wide web. This was a prime example of executives lagging on meeting consumer needs/desires in the name of greed.
After AOL's slow, painful, final, death the world economy collapsed. The massive Chinese factories charged with making AOL's "2500 hours FREE" disks closed, causing the entire Chinese economy to dip well below the multi-billion dollar mark. Grasping for a solution China launched nukes at everyone. The world fell into a post-nuclear apocolypse. People not being able to check their email fell into canabalistic tribes wandering the countryside. The world was darkness...
Actually, I don't want to see people lose their jobs, but then again it will be refreshing to see people forced to come to grips with how the internet really works rather than relying on an anachronistic baby sitter to lay it all out for them. AOL was outdated 5 years ago. Get rid of it.
"AOL Paradigm Shift"
How did that letter 'f' get in there?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Sounds like a good idea. It could become a serious competitor to Yahoo if it drops its dial up. They have the parts and large customer base, but the execution sucks. This would allow TimeWarner to become the behemoth that everyone was scared of whenthe merger occurred. They can bypass many of the SEC merger restrictions by not offering ISP services at all.
I think they should sell it off or spin out the dial up, rather than shutting it down. LAst thing they need to do is alienate the customers they have left. It's still profitable, and makes lots of money.
Old paradigm: Charge more for less.
New Paradigm: Charge more for a little less.
Slashdot.. where people join together in deliberate ignorance.
Next thing you'll tell me the Soviet Union is going to break itself up.
I hope this means they make Yahoo Instant Messenger open source! LOL, good luck, I know.
Currently hooked on AMP
Does this mean Eternal September is almost over? ;)
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
I hope they remember to leverage their synergies. Don't shift without a clutch.
I thought AOL was spam!
...from Assholes On Line. Like how SGI renamed themselves from Silicon Graphics Inc.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
AOL could adopt the motto, "Don't Suck." It wouldn't help, though.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I see "PeoplePC" and "EarthLink" commercials on TV on a regular basis, and both charge less than half of AOL's $25/mo. Are lower costs/prices the secret to their sucess? How big is the overall market share of dial-up users at this point? How does the profitability of Cable/DSL compare?
How long until we see a similiar "paradigm shift" with consumer high-speed Internet pricing? If prices dropped accordingly, my $50 monthly cablemode/VoIP costs would become a nominal $6.50 per month. Heck, if it was that cheap I might even order a (gasp!) Pay-Per-View movie now and again.
Is it inevitable, or a pipe dream? Verizon and OptOnline have been battling pretty fiercly here in New York over the past few years, but both have maintained the same basic pricing throughout.
barack to the future?
AOL has some useful content very much in the way that MSN has some useful content. People already go to AOL.com for the entertainment news, free music previews and such. With free email (not a new concept) people may stop buy more often. It seems that they might be trying to take on Google and Microsoft for the content and search areas of the web market.
what are they gonna do with their CD factories?
They're using their grammar skills there.
First symptom: CEOs who use nonsensical marketing-speak like "paradigm shift" when what they really mean is "going out of business - everything half price".
In 1997-8, AOL had by far the best dial-up internet service in the US, as well as a very mixed bag of software and content (I'd be even harsher, but at that point the sheer mass of people in chat rooms and so on DID count for quite a bit on the quantity vs. quality scale). It rightly focused its marketing intensely on its virtues as an ISP, probably inspired by at least two very smart consultants (the other one being my partner Linda Barlow, but I digress ...)
At the time, I thought they had about two years to bring their software up to the standard of (ever-shifting) user functionality expectations, or they'd be stuck with a perception and positioning -- well, the nerds' perception would also be adopted by the mainstream. As it happened, despite firing their head of development who was a great networking guy but lousy at UI, they didn't fix the software, and they did become scorned by the mainstream. I thought they'd do better -- but then, I thought Bob Pittman would be unto them as Ray Lane was unto Oracle, and I proved VERY wrong about that.
And now -- well, as everybody says, it sucks. The email client sucks. The general UI is clunky. The collection of "content" and functionality is inferior to Yahoo. There are lots of negative weirdnesses (article headlines changing before you can click) and few if any offsetting postive "Wow!" weirdnesses.
So how do they fix that? Pretty much the only strategy that could work is to do something new, and happen to do it right. The internet does keep evolving, so the opportunity is always there. Another note suggested this should be in multimedia/broadband; that is indeed the obvious place to look, for ta variety of reasons. It matches the current technical opportunity. It matches the strengths of the rest of Time Warner. It's just assumed by the generation even younger than people who post here -- i.e., the generation to young to know or care that "AOL sucks".
AOL will probably live or die on how it evolves in the video generation.
To err is human. To forgive is good system design.
>People wanted to pay for programming with no ads... Remember the original setup in the 80's with cable?
.torrent, newgroup, or P2P network and you can have whatever programming you fancy for free.
>There is a market for "good" programming being sold directly to the consumer.
That might have been true in the 80's, but not today. Today, you can have "good" programming (whatever that means to you) for free. Just find yourself a
The simple fact is, today, the only way people will pay for digital content is if they feel like it. It's completely, utterly voluntary. And most people just choose not to pay. Consequently, the net dollar value of digital content IS trending to ZERO. So instead, content is going to be used as bait, bait to get you to view advertising.
Personally, I think it's a naieve approach. Even without technical aids to eliminate advertising, my eyes are now fully trained to ignore anything on a web page but the content I'm actually reading. They only way online "advertisements" get my attention is when I am purposefully Googling for a product. 99% of all ads imbedded in other digital content I either screen out or ignore.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Looks like Time Warner is going to do to AOL what AOL did to Netscape.
Gah
While they are at it they should monetize best-of-breed functionalities and reintermediate collaborative paradigms.
That's just my two cents.
bahahahaha...
Sweet.
Now my grandma won't have to pay those bastards anymore.
Anyone get the feeling AOL will be going through serious reorganization soon?
And what would it honestly take for AOL to become a service you would use?
\
From what I understand, nothing that's been proposed would make AOL's dialup service free.
Thus, those people who are currently using AOL as their ISP -- because they can't get broadband and for whatever reason, don't want to switch to a regular dialup ISP -- will still have to pay.
What's being proposed in TFA is a shift in focus of AOL's marketing efforts, away from promoting their pay-to-use dialup service, in favor of promoting their "free" ad-supported web-based services, which anyone with an existing internet connection can use.
So the people that you're talking about, who are using AOL as their only means of connecting to the 'net, would not probably see much change, except that they would slowly become further and further into the minority (since the service wouldn't be promoted anymore), and probably the quality of service is going to decline (since AOL's focus will be on other revenue sources). However, I don't think that dialup access will ever be free from AOL: they just have too much invested in it, and see it as too lucrative a source of revenue. As you pointed out, the people who are left as dialup subscribers to AOL aren't likely to change and are pretty entrenched, so they'd be shooting themselves in the foot to decrease the price. If anything, they'll probably increase the price or discontinue the service as they transition to a new business model.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
So basically AOL is going from suck to blow?
I discovered my first fake female chatter on Quantumlink.
This is arguably off topic, but I am reminded of Qlink. This was the primordial rich content service offered by Quantum Computer Systems which trumped all others at the time, and it was strictly for the Commodore (C=64) line. Other offerings such as Compuserve and Delphi were text-only.
I found these links, that some of you may find nostalgic:
http://www.jbrain.com/vicug/gallery/qlinkm eline.htm [scroll down to 1985]
http://internetgames.about.com/od/gamingnews/a/ti
And get the Quantumlink client @ http://www.quantum-link.org/
also.. of course.. the UNBIASED slashdot commentary:3 6
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/19/23212
Forget this. In memorial.
I think AOL may be missing the mark.....
Most of the frustrations that AOL users encounter are due to the fact that AOL is an advertisers wet dream come true. Users are sick and tired of being bombarded with volley after relentless volley of AOL ads and marketing. AOL doesn't seem to understand that they are marketing their service to death, and that customers don't want to see dozens of ads in EVERY WINDOW they open. Every feature on AOL hase multiple marketing tie-ins that turn users off.
Why would someone who could use a regular ISP, who can "sign on" (although this is really nothing more than cliking onto the browser's icon) to the internet without being slammed with dozens of advertisement ans self-promotions that AOL inundates their users with? Plus, it is the same price using a different ISP that doesn't require the user to browse through an interface that is desinged to allow AOL to force users to see advertisements? There is absolutely nothing special about AOL, except for it's user interface, which allows for the unrestriced forced viewing of advertisements.
It's been an industry joke for years that AOL, for some reason, just doesn't seem to get - AOL stands for Advertisements On-Line. If they cut out the crap that IS AOL, about 98% of it- the advertisements, self-promotions, and obviously profit-geared "service bundles", then people would NOT be leaving in droves. If it turned itself into a regular ISP, such as Comcast, etc., and eliminated the meaningless "features" that are solely marketing-driven, it wouldn't have to reinvent itself. AOL is sooo marketing-focused that it is missing the big picture: PEOPLE HATE ADVERTISING AND SELF-PROMOTION!!!!!
-----
Sig Sauer
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
My paradigm shifted, and I shifted to hospitel.
http://dack.com/web/bullshit.html
Isn't this how AOL got in trouble in the first place? I can't wait for this new ad revenue bubble to pop!
I was working for a client not long ago whos account had been compromised. Aol changed some account settings and made them all create new passwords. My client went on vacation, and charged me with getting all their stuff working again (wireless router, etc...) Well, somehow they also disallowed PPPOE on 1 of their accounts (I'm not sure how / why they did that, but I spent forever trying to figure out what they did, and then proving it to them) Mind you everything worked before they messed with the account settings.
Their solution was to destroy one of the accounts (which happened to be in use), and create one for the router. Technically appropriate, but they should have added an account IMHO, and it came about 13 hours too long.
I just wanted it to work so I could download updates and prepare them for Cable.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.