MediaGuardian.co.uk | New media | Signs of the times
Douglas Rushkoff writes in the Guardian:
[ . . . ] a company like AOL never had a future. AOL was a training ground: an introduction to the internet for people who didn’t know how to deal with FTP. None of us thought it could last, because once the technological barriers to entry for the internet had been lowered, no one would need AOL’s simplistic interface or it’s child-safe, digital content wading pools. People would want to get on the “real” internet, using real browsers and email programs.
I remember the early days of content programming at both TBS and CNN where ideas were shelved because AOL’s customers — a large segment of the market even then — couldn’t use them with AOL’s neutered interface. It got better/easier when they dumped one Spyclass-based browser for IE’s version.
If the union of AOL and TWX is annulled, it will be interesting to see what AOL has to offer. Can they offer a valuable dialup service and a viable content presence without the content TWX provides? The only upside I can think of has been the cost savings to the internet properties: CNN was a big stick to use on vendors when negotiating bandwidth pricing, and AOL/TWX is even more effective.
Why doesn’t AOL push CompuServe as its “expert” brand?
But why do people have to “graduate” from AOL, anyway? The Mac’s OS X is good for novices and experts alike; why can’t AOL be so, too? (BTW, did Apple really help design the AOL UI once upon a time?)
As the big fish, AOL should be able to offer more and better services to experienced users. It should have the fastest network; it should be able to offer QoS and CIR that others can’t; and so on.
I even have some ideas on what AOL could do with those coasters they mail by the kiloton.
(BTW, did Apple really help design the AOL UI once upon a time?)
Apple’s eWorld was a repackaged AOL (it was the net service for the Newton, and worked well enough at that). I don’t know about anything else linking them.
Paraphrasing from AOL.com, by Kara Swisher:
When the company was still called Quantum, it ran a service for Commodore owners called Q-Link. It wanted to create a similar service for the Apple II, with help from Apple, but Apple already worked with GE on AppleLink.
“…In early 1987, the customer service department gave him the go-ahead. Case had struck the deal of his young life.
Quantum would create and run Apple’s private online service for Apple II, and later for the Mac and would be able to use the magical Apple logo to sell them, as long as they incorporated the strict design standards of Apple to make it look like an Apple product. Apple would help market the product and receive a 10 percent royalty from all users. Quantum would make its money from running the services.”
It was to be called AppleLink Personal Edition, and debuted at AppleFest (according to Swisher). A test-marketing advertisement (I seem to remember it being in Macworld, but it might have been MacUser) drew “tens of thousands of responses” expressing an interest in a Mac client.
Infighting between Apple and Quantum on a variety of issues ended the relationship before a Mac product ever shipped, Apple refused to pay “millions of dollars [Quantum] had laid out to create the service”, and Quantum threatened to use their agreement to stop Apple from marketing any other online service.
Apple paid $2.5 million to recover their logo rights, and Quantum had to rename their AppleLink Personal service. Among the candidates: Quantum 2000, Infinity, and (Steve Case’s suggestion) America Online. The abbreviation became AOL because lots of companies had three letters, and because “AO sounds too much like BO, as in body odor.”
In Winter ‘90-’91, discussions were held about H&R Block (which owned CompuServe) buying the fledgling service, which had about 110,000 customers, for $50 million.
The problem with AOL making an “Expert” version of the service is that most of the people that program/deal with the proprietary service can not be considered experts themselves. After all they think that AOLMail is the shizzywizit of Email Programs and didn’t understand why TWX fought tooth and nail to keep Outlook as the standard and not move to AOLMail. After all AOLMail is such a fly product.
Along those same lines the AOL Service folks think that the AOL Service is the Internet. They don’t understand the fact that they can surf, download, use email and view pr0n outside of that cartoonish AOL interface. With all the bandwidth at their disposal on the AOL Campus users, unless you are someone who has a aol.net email address, spend most of their day in the AOL 7.0 or 8.0 interface attempting to do their job. Which means going through the AOL Proxy servers and everythign else that is AOL. This is probably one of the major reasons the TWX honchos are starting to get back in charge of things.
that sound you hear is a dinosaur looking for some reason to keep on existing . . . . .
Thanks for the AOL/Apple history lesson, Frank. I knew they had worked together in some capacity.
Steve, good point on the mindset of AOL employees, but I think that could be dealt with. The expert brand (as I say, CompuServe?) would need to have employees who “get it,” but they can be hired and found within AOL (they can’t all be so myopic).
Paul wrote:
that sound you hear is a dinosaur looking for some reason to keep on existing…
Okay, but people need ISPs. The question is, do users need AOL’s “value-added” content and services? Maybe this is what you mean by the dinosaur-ness of AOL. I say, yes. Isn’t AOL still the safest way to let kids go online? I assume so, and that will always be a large market.
And I maintain that you can appeal to all user levels. Witness this comment from latest issue of PC Mag, in which AOL 8 and MSN 8 are compared (emphasis added):
AOL’s approach is a good fit for people who want the Internet’s vast information domain managed for them, while MSN’s combination of personalized content, functionality, and optional features should appeal to beginners and Internet-savvy enthusiasts alike.
So MSN can appeal to all while AOL is dumbed down too much, perhaps for reason’s suggested by Steve.
To digress slightly:
Aside from the expert brand, I’ve been long expecting AOL services targeted towards the SOHO and ROBO (remote office / branch office) markets, but none are in sight. Here again, AOL would leverage its huge IP network, providing *secure* e-mail and IM services, workgroup-oriented websites, CIR (committed information rate) across the network, etc.
MSN will likely be the one to break into the business market by connecting workers in new ways. Start with access to the desktop via Windows; create a content management system that includes a Zoe-like client so you can search all your documents, then extend that up into the enterprise and out onto the ‘net; allow users to publish selected content to other users (workgroups) and the public (MS isn’t doing XML everywhere for nothing, is it?); create secure instant messaging and email that is integrated with the Exchange servers which are proliferating (can you say “company directory”?). And so forth.
Groove may address some or all of these concepts but has no tie-in to ISP services. Some of what I describe is non-trivial (CMS ain’t so simple!), but MS would simply start small and make it reasonably good by Version 3, as usual.
Some dinosaurs ate other dinosaurs.
The best way to let kids go online is the same as the way you let them cross the street: not without you at their side.
My sense is that folks at AOL think they offer more value than they really do: they’ve not graduated from being the gateway to the wired world that they once were. AOL could service the markets you mention *if* they were willing to drop or totally redo their client software and just focus on the networking and their existing content relationships. As long as they keep people in the little cartoon box, no real business will want it.
Remember when MSN first came out? It was a dialup service, cloning AOL right down to the TLA. Then Netscape surfaced, Gates wrote his “internet tidal wave” think piece, and they switched gears. I suppose you can use MSN as a dialup service somewhere, but it’s no longer touted as what MSN is all about.
In early 1995, Microsoft management was intensely focused on Windows 95. Microsoft was scrambling to complete Windows NT, government regulators were probing anti-competitive practices, and Gates and other senior executives had already committed to developing Microsoft Network (MSN), a proprietary online service to compete with America Online (AOL).
Planning for MSN began in 1992, and Gates approved bundling the service with Windows 95 in 1993. In 1993, AOL was perceived to be a far larger threat than the Internet.
By November 1994, Mosaic accounted for 60 percent of all Web traffic. In December, Netscape launched its first commercial Web browser, Navigator. In four months, with no advertising and no sales in retail outlets, a stunning six million copies of Navigator were in use. By the spring of 1995, 75 percent of Web surfers were using Navigator. Mosaic’s share had plummeted to five percent. By May 1995, Gates was sounding the Internet alarm. He issued a memo titled, “The Internet Tidal Wave” declaring that the Net was the “most important single development” since the IBM PC. “I have gone through several stages of increasing my views of its importance. Now I assign the Internet the highest level.”
Microsoft Blindsided!
How has AOL responded to this? I hate to use MSFT’s own words (must wash my mouth out) but are they innovating or litigating? (bleaagh)
They bought Netscape and freed the lizard by sponsoring the mozilla project, but how else have they tried to increase their value to users who aren’t interested in their little world of keywords?
…how else have they tried to increase their value to users who aren’t interested in their little world of keywords?
At the risk of sounding like an AOL booster:
Very family-oriented with little for advanced or business users that I am aware of.
More proposed SOHO/ROBO features: online faxing, since paper refuses to go away; certified e-mail delivery; really good spam filtering (ha!); VPN services.
Why am I harping on this small office stuff? There are plenty of small offices and home-based workers who could benefit from good networking services — broadband with VPN service to the home office, perhaps private label e-mail and a website. To get that now requires a hodgepodge of providers and software and a bunch of integration.
* AOL attempts to be easy to use
faint praise: do they succeed or not?
* AOL creates a lot of content
They *buy/license* a lot of content
* AOL offers features like the homework advisor (I don’t know if it’s worthy)
Google, anyone?
* AOL offers a whole houseful of user profiles on one account
Most ISPs do this now, especially for broadband
* AOL portends to offer security for parents (there is an age beyond which you let the kids cross the street by themselves, but only when you think they are in a reasonably safe neighborhood)
Easily outfoxed by any reasonably crafty kid.
I agree these are good ideas and real niches, but I don’t see AOL providing the solutions.
I agree these are good ideas and real niches, but I don’t see AOL providing the solutions.
You asked “how else have they tried to increase their value to users,” and I stated how they have tried. We agree they are not succeeding.
We’ve digressed quite a bit. The $64K question is, “How can AOL keep people from graduating?” Surely AOL surveys some of the users who leave them; I wonder what they say. (One thing I just thought of: AOL.com email addresses are considered the mark of inexperience. I doubt AOLers have much cred on slashdot!)
To turn the question around: As an expert user, what do you want from an ISP? AOL has to figure out how to make those services better than others do. And they must let you escape from the AOL client, completely.
We may be done beating this horse, but I’m still reading if you’re still writing.
(One thing I just thought of: AOL.com email addresses are considered the mark of inexperience. I doubt AOLers have much cred on slashdot!)
as the saying goes, you can’t spell asshole without A-O-L.
I wonder if they survey the users who leave: given how much churn they have (people who take the coaster deals until they have to pay), they can’t be doing anything useful there.
What do I want from an ISP? Much the same as what I want from the government: to be left alone, for the most part.
Be reliable, robust, responsive to issues, and that’s about it. I don’t use the AT&T web interface to navigate: I know where I want to go without their help.
AOL’s raison d’etre has been adding value above the OSI model of pure connectivity: they want to provide things for you to connect *with* and I’m not sure that’s as valuable as it once was. Amazon.com has the retail space covered, now that they offer clothing from a whole bunch of well-known partner brands.
What do they *now* that no one else does as well?
I’m surprised there isn’t a co-op ISP you can join.
AOL’s raison d’etre has been adding value… I’m not sure that’s as valuable as it once was.
Yeah. If we could answer the questions we’ve raised, we’d be worth millions to AOL, but maybe there are no answers. AOL must do *some* user and ex-user surveys, but only it knows what their users are doing online.
BTW, I realize that you’re correct about kids going online: The only way it’s safe is with an adult by their side. When a single mouse click can install a potent worm or virus (Free games! Click here!), one shouldn’t let minors drive mice. Not to mention the creeps in chat rooms. Of course, I know some adults who would happily click on that fictitious link, above, but that’s another story.
yes, I’m resigned to being under-appreciated ;-)
A co-op ISP is a great idea, but I think we’ve moved onto a point where it’s just a commodity. I know there are food co-ops — we have a large one here in Seattle — but food and our relationship to it are evolving (organics, shade-grown coffees, fair trade produce, etc.). Bandwidth is apolitical and for the most part cheap.
I’m sure AOL does some analysis but I would guess the numbers are skewed by churn.
The question that arises from this? why do we need AOL at all? if the needs it met are no longer relevant, why do/should we care? If it went away tomorrow as a client interface (all you got was a browser and email, just like if you got with mindspring), would all its users drop off the net? The shopping they can do at Amazon. email and the web are the same as anyone else can provide. AIM could exist outside the AOL world.
I seem to remember that a big part of AOL’s appeal was the chat rooms and other anonymous “rooms” for all types. The bottom line of one article I read was that sex was a big part of AOL’s business, virtual and t’other kind.
AIM could exist without AOL, but AOL doesn’t want to exist without its closed world of AIM. Oh, yeah — they’d open it up but for the security concerns. Right.
Not even the sex-oriented uses need be AOL-based; there are other IM worlds and other communities (Yahoo, for one).
PC Mag suggests that MSN and AOL are for those who want the community features; all others should be happy with a basic ISP such as Earthlink. This mirrors what you say (although you also wonder if *anybody* needs or wants the community stuff).
Whether they create or buy the content, MSN and AOL do offer members-only exclusives such as celebrity chats. You and I couldn’t care less about such junk, but some folks like that pap.
What I don’t understand is why all the attention seems to be on the AOL client and community crap, while the network is treated like an afterthought. There is little talk of fast connections, high reliability, and so forth. The largest network should be the best, and that doesn’t appear to be the case.
Given a properly-equipped network, you can provide CIR throughout that network, allowing services such as VOIP to work reliably. Imagine if AOL provided netphone service that really worked, so long as you were calling another AOL member. Talk about user lock-in…