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AOL Cutting 2000 Additional Jobs
butterwise writes "AOL plans to cut 2,000 jobs, or 20 percent of its worldwide workforce, as the Internet division focuses on advertising sales to make up for subscriber losses. 'The latest cuts will pare AOL's staff to 8,000, down from about 18,000 employees in 2001, when the company bought New-York based Time Warner for $124 billion. The combination led to $100 billion in losses and a more than 60 percent drop in Time Warner's stock as customers dropped dial-up Web access.'"
They do not know any better, it is as simple as that really. They either do now know other options exist, think the service is the same, or for many they are to lazy to break their ties with AOL thinking they will lose their email, aim, and other things AOL gives them.
I have asked numerous people why they still have AOL over the years and almost all of them said that they have had it for so long that they are uncomfortable changing for whatever reason. AOL does a great job locking its customers into its systems and making it seem counter-intuitive to switch.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
AOL didn't buy Time Warner, they merged in what was widely consider one of the blunders of the "dot com era". A blunder for TW that is. It is also considered one the smartest things AOL CEO Steve Case ever did. Many people believe that he pulled the wool of Time Warner's eyes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Warner
The death of dial up did not have to be the death of AOL. TW had all sorts of content it could have sold as a subscription to it's user base before they lost it all. Now they are scrambling and suing their fans to keep their media empire alive. More savvy competitors are cutting into their sales via the internet with no base at all. They expect the treats to draw customers.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I have asked numerous people why they still have AOL over the years and almost all of them said that they have had it for so long that they are uncomfortable changing for whatever reason. AOL does a great job locking its customers into its systems and making it seem counter-intuitive to switch.
don't blame AOL for customers being 'comfortable'.
That's the same reason most people give for using Eudora or Pegasus mail clients. Its not that these companies/products have 'locked customers in' or made it counter intuitive to switch, its simply that people have gotten comfortable, and they don't perceive enough value in changing.
(Not that there is anything wrong with Eudora or Pegasus. But most people using it aren't "choosing to use it", its simply the case that they've used it for so long its just what they use, it works, and they don't want any hassles.)
I had a friend who worked for AOL. He had bad story after bad story. Apparently their biggest problem is that the execs in Virginia are in an AOL only universe and have no idea that Silicon Valley (not Virginia) sets the pace for the internet.
I'm willing to bet every single person they lay off is a regular employee and not the management responsible for turning a one-time good service (circa 1996) into a cluster f*ck of bad UI design and pop-up ads.
I recently used a 6 month free trial that came with my computer and only logged in twice in six months. It was so awful. Their core competency is their chat, yet it's antiquated and difficult to use. Instead of spending money on making their cheat more usable for the users they instead spent on "channels" and other "value" features that really have zero value to anybody but advertisers desperate to reach mindless idiots.
In the end when I called to cancel my free trial at the end of the six months they converted me to a "free account." I still haven't logged in, even free AOL doesn't provide a value proposition that is worth accepting their free services. That's how bad their UI has gotten.
Ultimately the responsibility for this cluster f*ck lays with the CEO of Time Warner. Long ago he should have fired all of the Virginia staff and opened more offices in the ultra competitive and internet-centric Silicon Valley. Out in Virginia they miss out on the buzz of what's new and coming, they miss out on the general savy of the entire software engineering and web design community in Silicon Valley. In Virginia the pool of GOOD web designers and engineers must be tiny.
The Generation
I'd say something witty here, but I'm not that bright.
And we are still feeling repercussions from the burst...
Because you can't take your aol email account with you. We need email address portability! Gah thinking about that as an idea makes my head wanna plode.
"I feel sorry for the canned individuals"
Don't. I'm not trying to sound mean, but there is really no reason to feel sorry for them. They get 2 months of severance pay and get to get out before things really get bad (read, bankruptcy). Plus now that they are no longer working for AOL, maybe their neighbors will be willing to befriend them again. They are the lucky ones.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
AOL was among the first to profit from the discovery that the future of online services didn't lie with the Geek - and with a half-dozen or more arcane clients for the BBS, FTP, TELNET, USENET, IRC chat, etc.
AOL pioneered flat monthly rates, automatic updates. There were perfectly intelligible reasons why users became comfortable with dial-up AOL and why they remain comfortable with portals like Yahoo now.