<One thing that would tank AOL for sure would be an outage of more than a few hours within the next 30-60 days.>
I don't agree. People are conditioned now to expect lousy service from AOL during this buildout period. Don't you think that the AOL spin doctors would be able to explain away a system crash as part of the investment which customers need to make to get a 10 million member AOL community?
I just don't think glitches will matter in the long term for AOL. Most of what it has accomplished, with limited resources, is truly awe-inspiring.
Hopefully, my comments have added a bit of balance to the board. I think the bears (with whom I agreed fully when the price was in the 70's) are on the wrong side at present and have blinded themselves to the positive aspects of the stock.
Peter Lynch isn't always right. Years ago, I sold my $8 AOL because I decided CompuServe was much stronger technologically. God, I hated the stupid blue AOL bar and was convinced the company would be out of business shortly. I even bought shares of H&R Block, parent of CompuServe, and was lucky to get out with a small gain before everything collapsed.
AOL got rid of the blue bar. The 3.0 version of the software is pretty good, and Casablanca (Version 4.0) should be very impressive. After the system is improved, with the benefit of cash from a massive secondary offering, word will get out and AOL will leapfrog to ten million or so. At that point, the revenue model will kick in and, unfortunately, AOL will be taken over by someone who considers the stock to be a bargain.
Let's see what develops.
Regards,
LordDarley
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