Comments on: AOL loses Calacanis: You’ve Got Bail

By: Anthony Paul

Anthony Paul — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 17:26:34 +0000

Great Follow-Up, Nice Depth In Your Story…
AOL jumped on a merry-go round it now cannot get off !
(Calacanis)has great talent and intentions though, Just forgot who he was working for…

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 00:43:47 +0000

Thankfully I never signed up for AOL (though I did get a free e-mail account the other day just to diagnose something — made me feel dirty). I used Prodigy back in the early 90’s. When the web came, I just jumped into Netscape (ha!) and never gave AOL another look. Too many horror stories from people who went down that path and never escaped. It would be cool if they would share access to their walled content, if they’ve built some value there.

By: TDavid

TDavid — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 00:35:29 +0000

There are — or at least were — some outstanding speciality content areas on AOL like the keyword: novel area which a long time ago I spent a lot of time visiting and enjoying. Not of wide interest perhaps to people not interested in reading fiction (not sure where you fall on that one, Sterling), but there aren’t a huge amount of outstanding weekly fiction contest sites on the web. At least there weren’t in the mid to late nineties, maybe there are tons of them now.

I understand from the time I worked (volunteer who got a comped AOL account) that other areas unrelated to writers and writing had equal interest and good to great content. Most of that was never archived or searchable thanks to AOL’s walled garden which has really hurt them over the years in being recognized beyond their own member base. I thought AOL was making it so that content would be allowed to be searched and reviewed by non-paying members, but maybe that hasn’t happened yet? I’m a little reluctanct to install AOL’s client on any of our machines, even if it is free these days just to find out. It’s been too much hassle getting out of their stuff

I have mostly fond memories of AOL content areas, but the exact opposite with their software.

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 21:59:47 +0000

If I were Time-Warner, I’d be looking to shake AOL off like a bad cold. ISP, Search, E-mail, chat, and Digg-clone. Only the chat is first-rate, everything else is second best or worse. Or am I missing something?

By: TDavid

TDavid — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 21:05:16 +0000

Maybe somebody will tweak the audio for that familiar mail message This latest management musical chairs could become AOL’s dying gasp as they finally get assimilated by somebody else (Microsoft? Yahoo? Google?). The only thing good AOL has going for it IMHO is their content. If they don’t find some viable way to highlight and promote that content to the rest of the world, they’re done. The dialup ISP business is fading fast.

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 20:49:35 +0000

“You’ve got bail” … best title so far in this meme.

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 20:48:56 +0000

I agree with your prediction. Unless Netscape does something to differentiate themselves in a positive way, they are just a “me too” with a “once was” name.