I hear all this talk about how the AOL Time Warner merger has failed, and you know, at this point I agree.
What I was hoping for when AOL merged with Time Warner was that first and foremost, AOL would use the, oh, twenty percent share they had in the cable market to begin distributing AOL Broadband. Think of it: Time Warner cable boxes could come with an AOL interface that gave you everything from AOL IM to HBO to CNN to Time magazine. Basically an AOLTV that didn't suck.
Now, I'm sure this would have been expensive to implement, but AOL would then have had a solid 1/5 of the cable market to try and woo into the new service. Hell, they could have forced the issue if they'd wanted to; I remember when my cable company demanded that I upgrade my box.
Certainly I would have paid for it; Comcast Digital Cable is cool, but its interface sucks total ass and isn't Web-enabled. AOL could have raised the bar for broadband by offering all sorts of new features as well as cable, all in one bill. Instead, they're thinking of spinning off Time Warner Cable so as not to automatically lynch deals with other cable companies, I suppose.
But tell me this: what on Earth would drive a broadband user to pay extra for AOL when they can get AIM free and just use what their broadband service offers? Heck, many of us have learned to get free e-mail clients so that we don't have to change e-mail addresses every 15 minutes, I know I have.
So what is left to attract people to pay more to have AOL? Not much! The AOL chatrooms? YAY RA. Time Warner content? I can get that free through Netscape.com. Certainly it's not the sorry-ass e-mail client that comes with AOL, nor is it the brutally handicapped IM; what kind of sense does it make that AIM has far more features for free than the AOL version that you have to pay for?
I just downloaded Netscape 7.02 and naturally got the swell AOL icon on my desktop for, oh, five seconds. And it still screams "Unlimited Internet", as if that was something AOL had over other companies. THEY ALL HAVE UNLIMITED INTERNET NOW! HELLO? Shit, Compuserve is $9.95 a month and still offers unlimited Internet!
I'll say AOL 8.0 looks cool in comparison to older versions, but that's about all I'll say for it. Fact is: AOL better wise up and have a clue; there's just not that much to shout about in regards to AOL anymore.
Clue for AOL: You've got as many AOL members who like dial-up and insatiable coddling as you're gonna get. If you want more members, you'd better develop something that doesn't suck real quick.
Posted by kovu at February 18, 2003 6:09 PMTotally agree
I do see a way for AOL to use TW content to drive people to broadband. Just think if you could only get exclusive extras to TW movies and TV shows only with AOL-Broadband? Also, someday, all the TW content won't be free on the Net; their people do need to pay the bills.
What i think they need to do is expand the Compuserve brand to being low-cost broadband, somethin like $20-$30 a month (its about $50 around here). Even if it's at a loss for the first year or two (AOL/TW doesn't appear to mind being in the red) AOL would be a extra $10 a month fee to get all the exclusive crap. Kinda like the Realpass thing that Real has going on. After a couple years of getting free music, movies, and TV crap over your broadband, you will be hooked.
Oh well, that's my way to fix AOL/TW, which I only really care about anyways becuase i want to see people get paid for working on Mozilla. If they ever sold Netscape off to someone else, I would basically just be waiting to watch them crash a burn.
Posted by: cameron mulder on February 20, 2003 5:10 AM