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AOL Dumps $1.2 Billion Worth of Acquisitions
destinyland writes "The social networking site Bebo is being sold for just 'a small fraction of the $850 million AOL paid for the site two years ago,' according to the Wall Street Journal. Since its acquisition, 'the site has been shedding users as fast as Facebook and Twitter have been gaining them,' according to one industry observer, quoting an April memo reportedly sent by an AOL executive arguing that Bebo 'has been declining and, as a result, would require significant investment in order to compete in the competitive social networking space.' Bebo's traffic is already down 44% from last year, according to the Wall Street Journal, attracting just 5 million unique US visitors in May (versus 130.4 million for Facebook). And earlier this month, AOL shed the instant messaging service ICQ for $187.5 million — which it had acquired in 1998 for over $408 million."
AOL runs sites like Engadget, Joystiq, wow.com, autoblog, etc. They seemed to have been trying to rebrand themselves as a nerdy information hub for quite some time.
Well, they had a huge installed base, and while it's been declining since 2002, it's from a large peak and not all that high a slope. That's provided a ton of revenue over the years to let them survive these unsuccessful forays into other businesses.
They still have about 5 million paying subscribers. And they've actually increased the profitability per-subscriber compared to their heyday, because while in the late 90s / early 2000s they sold them dialup access (and had to maintain modems/etc.), these days they're mostly selling an add-on service on top of broadband internet access that customers get elsewhere. People for years would pay $10/mo basically to keep their email address that they'd had for years, or the software they were used to using (a lot of AOL users aren't that tech-savvy). Now you can actually get the software and email/etc. free, but you have to go click on something to request a transition to the free service (which is identical but w/o tech support), so several million people are totally voluntarily paying AOL $120/yr, for a service that also makes a good amount of money by showing them ads.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Jobs was a geek. He went to HP lectures while he was in junior high school. He then got a job at HP. He went to Homebrew Computer Club meetings with Woz, and worked as an Atari technician (where he ripped Woz off on the circuit board design).
Woz on the other hand was The Geek.
Nothing - "*bing*" is the sound effect you'd get for a "you've got mail" notification.
In CIS countries (Russia, Ukraine, etc.) ICQ is the most popular messenger. I don't like it, but that is what I have to stick to here for the same reason you are sticking to MSN.
So, ICQ ship is doing OK.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
On 6134 September 1993, what would give you that idea?
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.