| She's got it Right Heh! She pretty much hit the nail on the head and most of the posters in this thread missed.
I think her take on the current state of broadband is on the money, as far as migrating the current AOL customer base is concerned. AOL's typical customer, for the foreseeable future, is going to be the dial-up consumer. Many AOL'ers can't get DSL or cable access because of where they live. Many AOL customers just won't make the move to broadband because of the cost, or as one poster put it, inertia.
My family is on AOL. I'm the only one on DSL. I've got AOL DSL and it works alright for me. I don't think my sisters would ever consider giving AOL up. It doesn't make any difference to them about cost or speed. They have their AOL buddies, they have their AOL chatrooms, they have their AIM and their AOL email. If they buys stuff on the web, it's through AOL and they have it charged to their AOL account or buy from a merchant that uses AOL's referral service. As far as I know, none of them really surf outside of AOL and I don't think any of them use any browser other than AOL's browser. When I send them links, I have to copy/paste into the AOL browser, then send it to them as a Favorites link. Sending them a plain URL usually doesn't work, no matter how I explain it on AIM.
Heh, I know guys with broadband that still have an AOL account because other family members don't want to give AOL up!
Most of the people that post at DSLR think outside of the box. That's not the AOL customer. Most AOL'ers aren't comfortable outside of the box. They like the warm, fuzzy feeling they get with AOL. It may sound funny but most really like that "You've got Mail!" sound. |
