You’ve got mail! Who doesn’t remember AOL’s trademark mail alert?! AOL used to be the universal term for going online. What are you doing tonight? I’m going on AOL. Cool!
All the way back to 1985, curious computer users were going online via dial-up. That meant hearing that awful robotic sound of something between a fax and a Qbert game, still sticking with the 80’s theme here. Although that sound was pretty annoying, it also meant that you were successfully going online which was a good thing. AOL’s mass advertsing started in 1993. It mass mailed the AOL CD to every household and popular retail stores. You were able to trial AOL free for 30 or 60 days and then decide if it was for you. Not a bad marketing concept since any computer user was happy to try out a free CD back then.
In the early 2000’s, AOL had financial difficulty that wasn’t helped by falsified results. This was followed by some moderate moves, such as Steve Case resigning as the chairman in 2003 as well as a free offering of e-mail to Web users in 2006. AIM was launched for the iPhone in 2008 and then TimeWarner spun off in 2009, making AOL independent. Not a heck of a lot was accomplished since the early years, at least, not anything revolutionary.
The question is: Will AOL last another 25 years? We think the question should rather be: Will AOL last another 10 years? AOL was the start of the Internet with its Internet service. To keep subscribers, it has kept pricing the same for years for many AOL users who jumped from dial-up to high-speed. Also, AOL’s computer support team was always responsive, making sure you ultimately spoke with a live person. It probably wasn’t hard to provide tech support since most of the questions relate to forgetting the password.
AOL is happy to keep its older generation of computer users versus them jumping ship with all of the younger generation to Gmail, Yahoo, MSN, and other free e-mail accounts that don’t require a bloated AOL software to use e-mail. AOL has tried to keep up by offering free e-mail via the webmail interface. However, it is no better than other e-mail accounts.
In fact, it confuses current paid subscribers with asking “Don’t I have to use AOL to get on the Internet and access my e-mails?” AOL has somewhat brainwashed the casual e-mail users. Many folks really still think you need AOL to get online since they were so used to doing some via dial-up and now are recent converts of high-speed Cable Internet access. AOL really needs to throw out a fresh product or service for it to last longer than 5-10 years or else the Googles and Microsofts will continue to gobble it up for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a late-night snack.
