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The AOL Roller Coaster
eldavojohn writes "There's a lengthy article at Information Week about AOL's history. A lot of us are familiar with AOL's history but few of us realize that it sits at a crossroads today where it could potentially find its way back into consumer's pockets — something it's tried to do before in a hit-or-miss fashion. From the conclusion of the article, one analyst states: 'Ironically, although you'd think AOL should dump its family mentality in light of its competitors like Yahoo, the key to AOL future branding success vs. Yahoo could be to actually capitalize on its family friendliness alongside targeting the tech-savvy community currently owned by Apple.' AOL has been met with many problems as of late, but can they pull themselves out of the hole this time?"
First, they could stop thinking of Mac users as 'tech savvy'.
...die in a fire. A nasty, painful fire.
The article kind of glosses over that time that AOL released its users onto the Internet at large with absolutely no barriers or training, even an indication they were really not on AOL.
One of my funniest memories of that time was when someone had a webpage up criticizing AOL, and an AOL admin/cop/whatever contacted him and seriously explained that the webmaster was violating AOL's terms of service, and to take the webpage down immediately or have his AOL account terminated.
People looking for examples of how a corporate entity will gang-bang a shared service at the first opportunity need look no further than AOL and its toxic bus-load drop-offs onto the net.
Next time, mention that in a "History".
Truly, owned is good word to describe it. Apple is for brainwashed suckers who have more money than sense. Only a halfwit with no technical skills would exchange overpriced software (Microsoft) for overpriced hardware (Apple) and consider himself a tech-savvy person.
Run GNU/Linux on cheap/commodity hardware and you will not need any whoring analyst to tell you that you're a tech-savvy person.
What the hell is AOL?
No really...
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AOL VS The Internet:
http://www.airsho.com/PCwebster/aol_users.htm
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I believe that the article has it right in terms of wondering what's to draw people to AOL when what they're offering is availabe quite widely from other providers. Once you've been in the wilds of the web, do you really need the kind of coddling they offer? Shiny interface and its free, but hardly necessary (What's necessary? Think Google). In between that and the recent security slippage, I'm skeptical this will be any kind of draw.
That's funny. "...at the forefront of the Internet revolution".
AOL was the last of the big BBS' to move to the internet, dragged kicking and screaming into ISP-dom by the flight of its subscribers to services that provided internet mail, usenet, ftp and uucp.
About ten thousand of Jack Rickard's army of sysops were offering internet services before AOL's tentative entry. Hardly "a company that was once ahead of its time", AOL nearly didn't make it at all.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
I don't know if family friendly is a word I would use with AOL. Every browsed their own chat rooms? You see a lot of user created room names like M4M in various forms. Also, AOL is more a content provider now than just an ISP. Your average ISP is not AOL/Time Warner. They give away their music videos (music.aol.com). I wonder how they will make money with their free service. Lastly, all you needed to do to use the internet without AOL in the days of dial-up was login to AOL, and then minimize it.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
We started off using AOL when they had all the free trials gear for dialup. When we'd get through a free trial, we'd just use another credit card. Now, Dad pays for Unlimited Dialup (broadband not available at his house) with them. He knows there's cheaper, and in almost every other aspect he shops around. But they Woo'd him in the beginning, probably with the email account for everyone in the family and the "kid-safe" chatrooms. I don't know any other ISPs (atleast in Australia) that run their own (easy to access for the not-so-technically inclined fold) chatrooms, and I think it's a good idea - people are basically forced to behave by the fact their username is tied to a service they're paying for. I still think AOL are good in this respect. Other than that, yes, AOL should "Die in a fire", as the OP states.
Most of the people who I know who use Macs were recommended them (and recommend them to others) because they want things to be easy and simple.
This *could* be an ideal market for AOL, I agree, but it's hardly tech savvy.
FWIW generally my experience is that the market is split into approximately four parts -
Those that want an easy life (running Macs)
Those that want complete control (running Linux)
Those that don't know what the options are (running Windows)
Those that have specific software needs (running any of the above).
The number of people in category one who could be described as tech savvy is not really all that high. You don't need to know a lot about the insides of a computer to decide that this one doesn't need much work to make it do what you want.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
Seriously, what does AOL really have to offer?
The Internet now has a ton of darn good content. At this point, no one company could ever hope to offer a meaningful supplement to the huge choices already available. The idea of AOL charging for "special content" just doesn't make sense anymore. Popular content is now free by definition (wikipedia, google, youtube, P2P, etc.).
The idea of AOL as a provider of bandwidth doesn't make sense -- AOL doesn't own the last-mile pipes into people's homes, so here they are nothing but a middleman, unnecessarily jacking up the cost of service.
Maybe AOL can carve out a niche as a "hand-holder" for novice users; but that requires manning expensive support phones. It's not clear to me that a company can make a profit offering support contracts to the domestic market, where the price points are so low.
And now AOL wants to reach out to the "tech-savvy" segment? Do they not understand that the tech-savvy have spent the last 10 years laughing derisively at the AOL brand name? They would be much better off developing a new brand name for that purpose.
I'm still pissed off that they turned me down as a beta tester for AOL back in the early 90's.
01/20/09
Have things really descended to the point that someone can seriously utter a phrase like, "the tech-savvy community currently owned by Apple"? Apple's entire schtick, from the first Macintosh onwards, has been that their products don't require any kind of expertise, that they "just work", and that they produce the computer "for the rest of us" -- where "us" should probably not be construed to mean frequent Slashdot readers and users of Sourceforge.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
And it would be good if they went back to having cleaned up chat rooms, even though I suspect that that boat sailed.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I had aol up intill I got dsl then I rid of aol for good.
... don't get me started.
AOL recently aced PC World's list of the top 25 worst tech products of all time. .
I don't think they were all bad. They did send me all those nifty coasters, frisbees, and BB targets.
Having PCWorld rate the top 25 worst tech products is a lot like Sadaam Husein rating the worst leaders and not even including himself.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Well, an excellent way for them to make a comeback is if they did a complete overhaul and focused on providing a heavily filtered version of the Internet in all forms, in an attempt to make it as safe from crime, viruses, and nasty content as possible. With the total and complete mess that the Net is in these days (flooded with spam, crime, and malware), I would think that at this point in time, some people would be falling all over themselves to use a service like that. I would even use a service like that for my business!
All I want to know is why in the WORLD you can't log into the mobile interface to check your email if you have an AOL My eAddress.
Actually, for that matter, you can't even check AIM screen names through that interface.
What gives??
AOL: an ISP for people who don't know any better
09:F9:11:02 - 9D:74:E3:5B - D8:41:56:C5 - 63:56:88:C0
Mac: For people who don't want to know why their computer works
Linux: For people who do want to know why their computers works
DOS: For people who want to know why their computer doesn't work
Windows: For people who don't want to know why their computer doesn't work
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Let's face it, it is a safe bet that no one reading /. is going to sign up for AOL or give that company any money at all.
Also, it is possible for the company to turn a large profit without that market (IMHO, IANABA*)
The major problem they face is a image problem, a lot of people who might like a service like AOL have already herd that "AOL Sucks, never use their service". Without debating the validity of that statement, I think most of these people could be fooled by a corporate name change. The people that will see through it probably won't use AOL in any form no mater what, so it doesn't matter, as far as AOL is concerned.
Along with a name change, the new company would need something to make it different from the 5million other ISPs out there. As some have suggested, I think providing a "Safe internet" would be a good one. No content provider is going to win customers by having "special content no one else has". However, the fact is there is a lot on the internet that average people would prefer to avoid. If the new AOL could convince people that it provided a useful and interesting, pre sorted and approved subset of the great big internet; while at the same time allowing people to venture outside the "Safe zone" if they are feeling adventurous, they could carve out a market. Particularly of families where parents don't care to monitor their children and decide what is "appropriate" for them; they could (and I think would rather) someone like their ISP do it for them.
This, as I see it, is what it will take to "turn AOL around".
*IANABA == I am not a business analyst
What web portal lets you watch all five seasons of Babylon 5?
Hi, I would like to cancel my subscription to this thread. No really. Please. I really don't want this subscription, please let me cancel. No you can't talk to my Dad. Please just unsubscribe me. Oh, 6 free months of this thread? I'll pay you to unsubscribe me. Therein lies AOL's yellow brick road to profit, make people pay to unsubscribe lol.
You mean "The AOL-CD Coaster"!
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I remember from the days of AOL 2.5 up to 6.0. The amount of progz, bombers, and OMFG the "Coach" account program... That was just some intolerable stuff. Though, admittedly, those progz came in handy defending yourself from those other progz out there.
I wish AOL would realize that if they wanted to get mass profit and save money (by needing less programmers for their cruddy software,) they should just have been a pure ISP. Let the users figure their own stuff out without your software in the way. It was this shoddy experience with their software that got me to switch to 'pure' services like DSL and Cable, and hopefully Fiber soon enough. Just provide the bandwidth, AOL, not extra stuff on our computer. No extra security holes, etc. Just give us the LINK, let us screw up otherwise. It's a far smarter move.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
AOL and Compuserve (remember them?) were great in the pre-CD era. I never bought floppy disks. Whenever I was low, I'd call up their free numbers and tell them I was interested in a free trial. They'd send me the disks, which I would promptly wipe and re-use. CDs took all the fun away.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I'm glad AOL finally dumped their monthly charges and offered free service last month. I have been paying $14.95 per month for years and now no longer. Great deal!
Well considering AOL is also a content creator (Warner/Time). They could easily do "exclusive content". They obviously couldn't compete against illegally gained content. But then most couldn't. But considering that AOL has a wide physical presence all across the world. They could offer services that while not "exclusive", could run better than if they were off the internet proper (much like Google has their own 'internet' as it were). With the wide adoption of broadband. AOL could offer services that would be exclusive to that type of connection. Something the "Internet" can't guarentee (QOS)
I have the same problem, I really don't understand what AOL is.
Until lately I really didn't care, but I now have a good friend in the USA who thinks highly of AOL, but so far I have not been able to really understand what AOL is.
Living in Denmark I don't think there is such a thing as AOL in our part of the world, I can get my internet connection through a number of ISP's who offers little else but the ISP and what you usually get along with that (email adresses, a little room for a homepage maybe and a "startpage" of some kind, maybe even some simple pieces of useles software), but somehow AOL seems to be something diffrent than an ISP, or at least providing the internet connection is only a little part of what they do.
I am not aware of AOL providing any content on the internet that I have used so far, so that can't be what they offer (or is it?).
AOL seems to provide some kind of software that my friend really likes, it should be very user friendly according to her.
She is skilled at many things using a computer, so I do think that what she says has a point.
This article did provide some more information on what AOL is, but still I am a little confused, so I would be grateful if anyone could point me to a place where I can learn more or explain to me what it is AOL provides.
I hope they go under. Though it's not likely to happen. It would be nice to see them slowly bleed dry.
I have breast cancer and AOL, I'm trying to find more information about it. What do you mean content blocked???
As the largest ISP in America (if not the world) for a time, it was the Wal Mart of the Internet for many years, and remains very popular. My dad recently got cable internet but still has too much invested into 8+ years at AOL to abandon his addresses & communities, so he continued to pay Bring-Your-Own-Access fee.
-Stu
Lollercoaster? :)